Indian heavy industries, especially the automotive industries, have employed industrial robots significantly with the result that cars today are quite affordable to the middle-class buyer. Nevertheless, the field of robotics is vast and highly varied.
Despite the enormous potential in areas such as space, surgery and societal needs, the application arena of robotics is becoming diversified at a comparatively slow pace. One possible reason could be because the Robot Technology is highly interdisciplinary, depending on the available talent and technological breakthroughs in multiple fields.
A robot is basically a computer-controlled mechanical system – a machine. The role of electronics is in sensor integration and controlling power delivery to the motors.
Robotics is entering into a transmuting phase:
In a variety of modern applications, it is impossible to program a robot in advance. For a large part, the robot has to learn itself and function as an intelligent, autonomous entity that will cohabit among other machines, systems and people. The programming is restricted to the hardware level and minimal logic related to acquiring and reacting to sensory inputs.
Let us consider the following:
The above systems exhibit high-speed motion, carrying significant loads or both. All of these are examples of single or multi-robotic systems that have to behave intelligently and not just “robotically”. Such applications cannot be realised purely from the point of view of dealing with robots as programmable mechanical systems. Any modern curriculum in Robotics must factor this interdisciplinary aspect.
In the 80’s, Robotics was mostly part of Industrial Engineering departments in US universities as Robotics were considered an important part of industrial automation while researchers in other departments were working on theoretically involved topics such as Control Theory, Fuzzy Logic, Computer Vision and Neural Networks. A decade later, a quantum jump in theoretical and applied research outcome in Robotics emanated from Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Departments of the Universities.
The scenario in India was also similar. For decades, in most Universities in India, Robotics have been offered as a single theoretical course in the Mechanical Engineering Department. In the past five-to-six years, several Universities and colleges with approval from AICTE have introduced exclusive B.Tech. Programs in areas such as Mechatronics or Robotics and Automation.
A close observation of the curricula gives an impression that the program has significant bias towards Mechanical Engineering barring a few courses related to electronics and microcontrollers. Students, even at Master’s level of these highly interdisciplinary courses apparently intend to remain in the comfort zone of their undergraduate studies. It might not be an overstatement to say that the interconnect between these varied courses is largely missing. Woxsen University aims to fill up this gap through B.Tech. programs in three cutting-edge disciplines.
B.Tech. program in Automation & Robotics at Woxsen University offers applied and advanced robotics with strong foundation in Computer Science. Modules related to basic robotics and mechatronics provide ample insight into the industrial standards, practices and applications. Modules on mobile robots and exoskeletons focus on the emerging area of field robotics. Added to this will be the significant theoretical and practical exposure in computer science, artificial intelligence and computer vision.
Heroic and intelligent deeds of robots in the emerging scenario will remain unrealised without a significant role of computer science. That also requires a large computing power. How the technology is going to address this need is another story.