Robotics in Academic Medical Engineering Education

Abstract

Robotics plays a very important role in medical engineering. Thus, it is necessary for students of medical engineering to acquire knowledge on robotics during their studies. Besides teaching expertise, a robotics project provides many possibilities for students to acquire additional qualifications for their career. Robotics is an inter- and cross-disciplinary field and hence holds a unique role among the technical disciplines. Computer science contributes with areas such as software-engineering and artificial intelligence. The design of the hardware involves classical mechanical and electrical engineering problems. As applications of robotics are far reaching, the scope of problems is broadened to fields beyond the technological ones. Scientific and engineering methodologies can be taught in a hands-on training at an early stage of the students' academic education. The work on a robotics project in a small team gives the students a possibility to develop their social and team skills. The popularity of robots based on literature and movies, added, robotics is ideally suited as the object of a project-oriented course for students of medical engineering.