Mechanical Engineer: Robotics Engineer

Education and Training

• Some robotics workers enter the field with a two-year degree from a technical school or community college.
• Others begin with a four-year engineering degree from a university and then move on to earn multiple degrees across several engineering fields.
• Robotics engineers must have a detailed understanding of math and science principles, along with the imagination and creativity to create new problem-solving designs.
• Strong communication and teamwork skills are essential.

Earnings

Mean annual wages for mechanical engineers are $83,480 or about $40 per hour.

Job Prospects

• Engineering professions overall are expected to have average job growth.
• Robotics engineers, however, tend to be in high demand.
• Broadly skilled robotics workers with multi-disciplinary skills and advanced degrees will have the edge in the job market.

Job Duties

• In general, working in a wide range of industries to maintain robotics systems or invent and test new ones
• Developing cost proposals and overall design plans for a robotics system
• Fine tuning designs through many revisions using computer aided design/drafting software
• Achieving final design and manufacturing specifications to produce a safe, economical, and easy-to-operate robotics system
• Programming robots to perform specific tasks
• Working effectively with a project team to achieve objectives

Working Conditions

• Robotics engineers may work at desks in offices or amid noisy manufacturing machinery.
• Long hours working on computers can create repetitive motion injuries, and working on machinery all day can be physically demanding as well.
• Maintaining existing systems and creating new systems on deadlines can be stressful.

Rich Hooper, Robotics Engineer

Courtesy of Rich Hooper

“Robotics engineers,” says Rich Hooper, “design computer-controlled electro-mechanical machines.” These range from familiar vending machines to sophisticated robots used to manufacture cars.

A Varied Career

Rich has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, and a Ph.D. in robotics.  He is now a Principal Engineer at AAI Test & Training, where he works in aerospace and defense technology.

He explains that robotics engineers need to understand a variety of scientific fields. For example, the engineers who created the Da Vinci robot (to help doctors with surgery) needed to know about biomedical, electrical, and mechanical engineering.

One of Rich’s favorite projects was working on an early design of a robot to service the International Space Station. Ultimately, NASA created the Robonaut, a humanoid machine currently assisting astronauts in space.

Taking Things Apart

“As a kid,” Rich says, “I liked to take things apart and see how they worked.” At fifteen, he built a robotic hand in the family garage. “I mostly scrounged around the house for parts—pieces of wire, motors from slot cars, and other items,” he remembers.

Rich maintains a website to help people understand robotics. To date, he has answered about 5,000 emails from readers. When a boy reported that his mom was upset because he took things apart around the house, Rich advised, “Tell your mom not to be annoyed—you are training to be an engineer.”

Two Paths into Robotics

If you want to design robots, you should get a four-year university degree in engineering. “All sorts of engineers are needed,” Rich says. “Study the area of math and science you like best.”

If you want to work on the ground floor with robotic systems, such as teaching automotive robots to paint cars, you can get started with a two-year degree from a technical college. Programming robots is a rapidly growing field where you have a good chance at a job.

See Rich’s website at www.learnaboutrobots.com.