Mechanical Engineering for Robots

Before robots are capa­ble of dis­pens­ing med­ica­tions, debur­ring plas­tic edges, or pack­ag­ing parts, they have to be cre­at­ed! Engi­neers get to take the cred­it for design­ing the robots to do what they are pro­grammed for. Mechan­i­cal engi­neers design the robot’s struc­ture, joint mech­a­nisms, bear­ings, heat trans­fer char­ac­ter­is­tics, etc. Elec­tri­cal engi­neers take care of the con­trol elec­tron­ics and pow­er ampli­fiers, while com­put­er engi­neers design the robot’s com­put­ing hard­ware. As these types of engi­neers work togeth­er, they build a com­plete robot.

To become a mechan­i­cal engi­neer focus­ing on robot­ics, most peo­ple obtain a four-year engi­neer­ing degree and then con­tin­ue to focus on mul­ti­ple engi­neer­ing fields. Robot­ics engi­neers must have a com­plex under­stand­ing of math and sci­ence, as well as a dri­ve to solve prob­lems and imag­i­na­tion to create.

While most engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sions have aver­age job growth, robot­ics engi­neers tend to be in high demand, espe­cial­ly if they have mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary skills. Once employed as a mechan­i­cal robot­ics engi­neer, respon­si­bil­i­ties include work­ing in a wide range of indus­tries to main­tain or invent robot­ics sys­tems. Engi­neers will work with CAD and draft­ing soft­ware to design and man­u­fac­ture spec­i­fi­ca­tions for robot­ics sys­tems. They will pro­gram robots to per­form tasks, and fine-tune designs. 

A pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Maine, Mohsen Shahin­poor, cre­at­ed a robot ver­sion of the Venus Fly­trap. Not only is this robot help­ful with catch­ing and eat­ing bugs, but it also demon­strates a new kind of tech­nol­o­gy that could lead to med­ical appli­ca­tion advances. Since this Fly­trap has the abil­i­ty to catch flies, it is also pos­si­ble that in the future, robots could feed them­selves, elim­i­nat­ing the need for a pow­er supply.

Mechan­i­cal engi­neers play a large part in assist­ing the robot­ics indus­try as it pro­gress­es and expands. Robots​.com con­tin­ues to spon­sor mul­ti­ple mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing pro­grams to help pro­mote the knowl­edge of robot­ics and engi­neer­ing. For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com rep­re­sen­ta­tives online or at 877−762−6881.