Electrical or Mechanical Engineer?

Community General Discussions
1

Hello, I am a highschool student who is a bit lost on the future.

My dream is to someday make robots and electronics. I love taking apart electronics and seeing what they are made of on the inside. Right now I am reading a book titled "Practical Electronics for Inventors". Most of the time, I think that a career that will suit me is electrical engineering, but it seems like robots is more mechanical engineering. I feel like I want a mix of both.

 

What kind of career would be perfect for a guy who wants to build robots in his future?

Thanks.

2

robots require both

robots require both electronic and mechanical work…

so choose whats in your interest and you can learn electronics as well as mechanical work here on LMR itself

on the other account

you can do a course in robotics along with your studies…

Am doing computer engineering,it doesnt mean that i cant make robots.:slight_smile:

LMR helps a LOT…

3

Check out mechatronics as well

You might want to check out mechatronics as well. It a mixture of “mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, computer engineering, control engineering, and systems design engineering”.

4

I had the same problem, but

I had the same problem, but after doing some research on the universities I found out about mechatronics, as the nuumio said, and even found few universities that offer Robotic courses. So it seems that you can have both, mechanical and electronic engineering in your future studies. Just pick a good university, that has your desired courses (mechatronics, robotics or etc…) and you’re good to go.

5

WOW

Mechatronics ??..

never heard of it before…

it must be great…

6

Me neither

Me neither. I heard about it a year or two ago when a friend of mine went back to school and started studying it. From what I’ve heard it’s pretty cool. Of course it also depends of the school you choose and the quality of the teaching there. Too bad I didn’t know about it when I was choosing my studies after high school. Although I think there weren’t any schools teaching mechatronics in Finland back then.

 

7

** it also depends of the**

 it also depends of the school you choose

It depends a lot, I entered this course last year, I was very disappointed, it was very slow, and the stuff we did was really basic, like really basic, I got frustrated and left.

If possible, attend classes of the course you want before registering for it.

8

i wish i knew it before

i wish i knew it before entering computer engineering…

9

thanks for the replies

I was reading up on mechatronics and robotics engineering and I see that

mechatronics: Mechanical engineering, Electronic engineering, Computer engineering, Control engineering, and Systems Design engineering

robotics engineering: Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science.

What would the main differences be between mechatronics and robotics engineering?

10

Nasa deserves a link

http://robotics.nasa.gov/students/robo_u.php lists USA universities that teach robotics.

11

Great list

Its a shame that the University of Illinois isn’t on that list. I heard that it’s a great engineering school :confused:

12

I’d say (atleast from my

I’d say (atleast from my understanding) there is almost none. Just the names.

13

I have an Electrical

I have an Electrical Engineering degree. There were no options for mechatronics or robotics when I went to school. ; j

I have seen in my career that Electrical Engineers wind up in a startling variety of professions. It’s a pretty wide field, and the coursework will give you a good basis for a large variety of professions.

All the Engineering fields are pretty intense; I agree with Revenant about taking your time. If I were you I wouldn’t limit my options to robotics this early on. However, if you really have a passion for it, look at schools that not only have good undergraduate degree programs, but also strong R&D labs and graduate degrees that interest you. That’s where serious professional robotics and automation are likely to be done.

Also, robotics as a profession is pretty varied. There’s a huge difference between robots for laboratory automation or manufacturing, and the type of robotics work you see being done by Boston Dynamics or universities sponsored by DARPA.

14

Electronics Engineering,

Electronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, software engineering.

Robots cross over a wide number of disciplines. It is a combination of mechanical, electronic, and software engineering. There are3 a great number of skills that can be involved.

 

I grew up as an auto mechanic. My dad owned a garage. In school, I studied electronics graduating to missile system in the Air Force and an electronics assembler for an aerospace company before eventually becoming a programmer. Skills I use for everyday things building robots came from each of these areas. There is no real hard and fast rule but as a minimum I would go electronics Engineering with a software minor.

You definitely will need electronics skills and fabrication skills. If you can understand the underlying mechanics and electronics, you will have more luck with programming since you will understand the limitations of the hardware you are playing with. You almost certainly need to program if nothing more than to have an idea about what you can do with the hardware.

While specialization is the norm, generalization allows you to understand more aspects of a robot at the fundamental level and vital for small development teams.

There are a few universities that have good robotics programs; MIT, Carnegie Melon, Stanford, Cal-tech all come to mind.

Buid robots. big, small, whatever. You will gain a wealth of information that will serve you well from the mistakes you make in the beginning, and we’ve all been there.

15

Im sorry you are mistaken

I am doing a Mechatronics Degree at the University of Waterloo (one of the better engineering schools in Canada). Robotics engineering is a subset of Mechatronics. Mechatronics encompasses many other topics not pertaining to robotics. For example for my internship I help to build mobile hospitals. That’s mechatronics because designing such a system involves mechanical, electrical, computer components ect. However no robotics. 

16

A physics major can also take you pretty far

My interests took me to a Physics major.  There are a lot of folks doing exciting work in engineering who started with physics.  In my local environment, there’s a fellow who understands almost every system on a very complicated spacecraft, another who developed all the algorithms and writes a lot of code for the same project, my manager is an expert on long-wavelength sensors, and a customer has several physicists in key management roles.  What unites these folks is that they all like working on difficult problems, using their physics background to understand how materials behave, and evaluate failures based on physical possibility.  Once you master the mathematics of physics, there are many ways to apply it to engineering and test design (test design is where you figure out how to test something expensive and possibly fragile, before it is operational).

If you follow aerospace developments, you might also know the name Elon Musk (of Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX), who is also studied physics, according to his Wikipedia biography.  Now he builds electric cars and spacecraft.

If you take start in Physics, you have a good scientific and mathematical background that you can apply to understand cutting-edge materials and systems. 

What I’m getting at is sort of what others here have said: Do what interests you, take many classes across a variety of technical disciplines, and keep working on hobbies.  If you have a broad experience with hardware, software, electronics, sensor systems, and materials science, in addition to your chosen specialty, you’ll do very well no matter what your major is.

My plug for physics,
-John

17

I was wondering when one of

I was wondering when one of you waterloo folks would show up…  :) I’ve worked with a few of the students in the coop program and currently my coop is in the mechatronics program. I’ll ask him about his thoughts on in and see if I can relay it here. I meant to talk to him more but it’s been a busy term and well, this is the final week he’s here…  :/ 

18

Glad we are out and about

Glad we are out and about causing trouble =) May I ask what company you work for/what his duties include ?

19

I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer in 2013, and I was experiencing a similar problem in 2009. My dad is an Electrical Engineer, so I have dependably had an enthusiasm for EE, for the most part since I would sit with him and deal with little issue of wiring and stuff around the house, I saw him work in spite of the fact that I couldn’t make head or tail of his unpredictable circuits, it appeared to be exceptionally intriguing and I needed to discover that. Yet, amid indistinguishable time from I went ahead with my higher examinations I turned out to be exceptionally keen on parts that move. EE and Mechanical have a critical cover went it comes to engines and rigging boxes at any rate.

At the point when the season of applying in unversities came, I realized that I didn’t need CS (in spite of the fact that I wish I, would do well to pay and stuff!), yet I was mistaken for what I needed, EE or ME, so I connected in EE in two colleges, and ME in other two and left it to risk. I got in ME and over years I have understood that it was the correct one for me, or might be I essentially made harmony with myself imagining that I would not have delighted in EE that much.

My point is, Engineering is critical thinking, there are issues in each field so in the event that you like to take care of issue, you could never be exhausted in Engineering. Innovativeness means advancement in designing, which again says that on the off chance that you are imaginative, you will have abundant open doors for inventiveness in each field, none of these fields is immersed particularly with regards to innovation.

I don’t comprehend what I would have done in your place, I revealed to you what I did. In any case, the best approach to push forward with it is, failing to look back on different decisions, or thinking twice about it. Never imagining that what might have occurred in the event that you would have taken the other decision. One trap is, at whatever point you initially hear the news of your concede, on the off chance that you feel alleviated and glad, you settled on the correct decision, if there is some dread, it doesn’t mean you settled on the wrong decision, yet it implies you have not come to accept it totally, which can turn out badly to the point of losing all enthusiasm for the field at all, you will wind up one of thsoe individuals who continuosly revile their field. You simply need to acknowledge it and work with it, intrigue will grow normally.

P.S. - Not to befuddle you more, yet none of my batchmates are doing CAD displaying behind a work area. Mechanical is significantly more about CAD demonstrating, that my college didn’t train us CAD displaying, and I wasn’t required either, atleast in my first occupation.

20

Hello plkdrmmr,
Welcome to robotics! It’s a great hobby as well as career.
There probably isn’t any single answer to your question, but I can offer some guidance. Perhaps other people can offer some more.
First, robotics is a mix of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering and computer science, physics, and increasingly artificial intelligence (which somewhat fits into computer science.) Because of that broad coverage of disciplines many schools are now offering degrees in robotics. Exactly what each of those includes varies quite a bit, though. And it also somewhat limits your scope – you can only fit so much into a four year education and there are only so many robotics jobs out there. Perhaps more important than the degree itself is the focus of what you do in school as well as any experience you manage to get. Many schools have robotics classes, clubs, groups, research projects, etc. And there are internships, as well. No matter what degree you pursue you can tailor some of your class choices to robotics. For instance, if you are majoring in electrical engineering and you have a choice between power distribution and computer interfacing classes, take the computer interfacing class.
Having said that, consider a few things. Hardware, whether mechanical or electronic, gets designed (hopefully!) once and put out the door. Software gets constantly upgraded for that same hardware. Software is a MUCH larger part of most robots than either electrical/electronic or mechanical. As an electrical engineer major you will almost certainly take a few programming courses, and as a mechanical engineer you may as well, or at least have the opportunity. Do that, but also keep in mind that two classes in C++ is a long way from developing 100,000 lines of robot code.
Also consider what happens if you DON’T get that dream job in robotics, or at least not right away. Which degree is more marketable? Also, which one would be more likely to help you get a robotics job down the line if you don’t get one right away? I won’t explain all my reasoning now, but I would recommend electrical engineering based on all those factors. It also tends to pay better! But in general, an EE (electrical engineering) degree with a strong emphasis on embedded systems and programming will probably be most flexible and most likely to get you the job you want.
One thing I recommend is to search the job market for robotics jobs. Find out what employers are asking for in job candidates. You have the advantage of just starting out so you can tailor your education / experience to what employers want.
Hope this helps.

PS – Make sure you study all the math and science you can: Calculus, trig, physics, chemistry, and all those STEM classes! Don’t wait til college!