<p>My son is very interested in robotics. He has worked at the local university at robotics lab doing driver level programming for their robots. He is very active at robotics club at his HS. At the same time he is very deep into physics; has taken AP before and is taking hydrodynamics course now in his junior year of HS. Now starting to look at the colleges he is not sure where to go. He considers a possibility of many years of study - undergrad and then possibly grad/Phd program. His desire would be to finally land in a place to work on developing new technologies in autonomous robotic applications in possibly different fields - autonomous vehicles, rescue, bio-robots, artificial intelligence, etc
What would be a good path to follow?
What undergraduate degree(s) to pursue? Any specific programs/colleges would you recommend to look at? Should he get a specific engineering degree or get a broad science undergrad education (physics/chem/bio), and then go into a specific robotics grad program? I would appreciate any thoughts and suggestions you can give and any programs you could point him to look at.</p>
<p>I work in the robotics field and I see people from many different undergraduate/graduate engineering backgrounds. Mechanical, electrical, computer engineering, and computer science are the most common. If he is looking to get into autonomy, I suggest having a strong CS background even if he studies a different field. (I did mechanical for undergrad and a robotics masters which was more CS based.)</p>
<p>As for schools, here is a list of a few schools…CMU, University of Pennsylvania, WPI, GT, VT, University of Michigan, Embry Riddle.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me if you have more questions.</p>
<p>Although I’m not the best person to get info from, I noticed that on my search for computer science programs, robotics is something that some of the schools seem to focus on, so I’d recommend that. As for physics, he can also minor in it. I’m not sure about robotics, my boyfriend’s very interested in theoretical physics, and is going to have to get his Ph.D in a highly competitive field to do research in a job that’s going to pay that much. That aside, that’s just theoretical. There are other fields in physics that are much more lucrative. Trust me, I’m not someone that only cares about money, but it’s important to know. Computer science has more applications post-bachelors than physics, in case for some reason he decides against grad school. He can minor in physics, and it wouldn’t be difficult to do.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know a lot on the subject, but I figured I’d throw in the bit that I know. Good luck on your college search!</p>
<p>Not sure about other majors, but mechatronics is a robotics class required for ME students, but it is also closely related to EE due to a focus on circuits.</p>