Robotics Research and Study Opportunities

Thousands of study and academic opportunities in Robotics are available internationally. Conferences and summer schools in Robotics are organized regularly in the best academic centers of the world. The majority of universities and many foundations also offer BA, MA, and Ph.D. programs in Robotics as wells as postdoctoral research grants, awards, and fellowships. Below you will find the updated list of international opportunities available in Robotics.

Robotics Scholarships

Robotics Fellowships

Robotics Conferences

Robotics relevant accounts on Twitter

What is Robotics?

Robots are technologically advanced machines that mimic human abilities and perform various tasks instead of the people. The area that helps create robots is called Robotics. It’s the multidisciplinary field of science, engineering, and technology, which studies how to produce robots, improve their features and bring their activity results closer to that of humans.

There are some debates you probably came across related to whether robots will improve human lives or, on the contrary, harm them. The possibly neutral and objective answer to this question is that it largely depends on how both manufacturers and users of the robots will approach the process. There are highly repetitive tasks, which currently require human labor, time, and effort. If robots do it instead of manual workers, those people can have alternative options to utilize their mental and creative abilities and contribute to new innovations instead of just repeating the same mechanical task all the time.

Generally, this idea stands at the core of the Robotic’s development history. The first robot created in history was Unimate. It was created in 1961 by Joseph F. Engelberger and George Devol to perform automated die-casting. Unimate had the shape of the big arm, and it was hydraulically driven.

So, manufacturing is the primary field where robots operated first of all, and it continues to be the dominant sphere of robots usage up to current. Thanks to the advancements in science, technology, AI, etc., robots significantly developed since the 1960s and entered a more complicated sphere of services, or, better said, almost every sphere of life.

Robots fight fires, clean homes, remind events, detect landmines in the areas of war. Robots also enter the sensitive sphere of healthcare, and learn to serve as surgical assistants, and perform other activities in the medical world.

The conversations of where Robotics will reach in the future sound like the exciting plot for fantasy movies. However, the scenario is pretty real, as AI is significantly developing and granting robots essential human senses like thinking and feeling. In combination with scientific and technological advancement, almost all the limits of future robots are eliminated.

ARMACAD has a separate section of the study and research opportunities in Artificial Intelligence you might find interesting.

Robotics studies

Studying Robotics is related to almost all the technological and scientific disciplines needed to construct a mechanism. Besides the purely technical aspect of Robotics, you will also learn subjects necessary to build the physical appearance of the Robots and control them. Therefore, expect to have subjects like construction, operation, design, control system, sensory feedback, and information processing for the Robotics academic programs.

You might study in exact Robotics majors or otherwise titled programs that emphasize the area of Robotics. Some of the available options for undergraduate studies include Robotics, Mechatronics, and Robotic Systems, Artificial Intelligence. The undergraduate degree will put much emphasis on computational skills and physical engineering. There are also opportunities to advance Robotics knowledge in graduate degrees, the common options for which include Automation Control, Computational Intelligence, Cognitive Robotics, Intelligent Systems, etc.

There are five main areas for Robotics studies. Together, they give the skills necessary to construct and successfully operate robots.

Operator Interface or Human-Robot interface is the primary channel through which humans can give commands to Robots.
Mobility or Locomotion is the sphere responsible for granting robots mobility skills by mimicking human movement or other moving creatures.
Manipulators & Effectors are similar to human hands that allow Robots to perform activities with the objects in their environment, such as picking objects.
Programming is the language that producers use to “teach” the robots what activities and features they should do.
Sensing & Perception help robots understand the external surrounding and how to behave with them, such as avoiding obstacles, turning when meeting angles, etc.

Research opportunities in Robotics

Robotics researchers worldwide try to answer the following question: Where else can the robots be applicable?

There are many fields in life that can highly benefit from the usage of robots. However, the plans of expanding robots to those spheres are still in theory. Besides, many spheres where robots already successfully operate need improvement of mechanisms and approaches. So, the main directions of Robotics research currently touch the topics like AI, machine learning, planning, localization, navigation, etc. Below, read the more narrowed topics of study in Robotics offered by most educational and research institutions.

Biologically inspired robot control
Decision-Theoretic planning and control
Human-robot interaction
Hybrid and Distributed Control
Mobile robot navigation
Mobile sensor networks
Modeling, simulation, and diagnosis
Personal robots
Sensory EgoSphere
Vision, image, and signal processing systems
Aerial Robotics
Assistive Robotics
Autonomous Vehicles
Microrobotics
Nanorobotics

The contemporary engineering and scientific approaches allow the development of many human-like machines. Will they benefit society or not largely depends on how carefully Robotics professionals can create them to avoid potential uncontrollable disruptions. We hope this section of ARMACAD will help you become one of those scientists who make a breakthrough in the field.