Robotics as an Undergraduate Major: A Retrospective

In 2007 Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) launched a degree program in Robotics Engineering to educate young men and women in robotics. At that time, there were only a handful of universities in Asia, Europe, and Oceania offering undergraduate Robotics programs, although many universities in the United States and elsewhere included robotics within a discipline such as Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering. WPI took a decidedly different approach. We introduced Robotics as a new multi-disciplinary engineering discipline to meet the needs of 21 st century engineering. The curriculum, designed top-down, incorporates a number of best practices, including spiral curriculum, a unified set of core courses, multiple pathways, inclusion of social issues and entrepreneurship, an emphasis on projects-based learning, and capstone design projects. This paper provides a brief synopsis, comparison with other approaches, and multi-year retrospective on the program. The curriculum has evolved rapidly from the original to its current state, including changes in requirements, courses, hardware, software, labs, and projects. The guiding philosophy remains unchanged, however, providing continuity of purpose to the program. The program has been highly successful in meeting its desired outcomes, including: quantity and quality of enrolled students, ABET EAC accreditation, graduate placement in jobs and graduate school, and course and project evaluations. The paper concludes with a summary of lessons learned and projections for the future.