1st International ROBOTICIST FORUM

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that has developed and changed rapidly in recent years. The academic mediation of this subject requires an holisitc understanding of the core contents and future trends of robotics. To pursue this question, the THWS held the 1st International Roboticist Forum in Schweinfurt on 17 and 18 January 2019. The list of participants included representatives from industry and science who discussed current and future challenges of robotics as well as cornerstones of academic education. The results have been incorporated into the THWS Robotics degree program and contribute to its high degree of application orientation and employability.

Definition of the job description "Robotics"

Robots are rapidly gaining in significance in the areas of industry, skilled trades, agriculture, health, medicine, research and private everyday life. It is likely that they will become established in all areas of work and life just like computers and that they will change the quality of our work and life. For years, the growth rates in the robotics industry have been in double figures and an end to this trend is not antici-pated, especially in view of the continuous improvements to artificial intelligence. Therefore, companies are already desperately looking for robotics engineers and experienced staff to develop and integrate applied and intelligent robotics systems.

Robots will establish themselves in all areas of work and life

This need can be met by universities of applied sciences (UAS) with an independent bachelor’s degree programme in Robotics which has been conceived from scratch.
Therefore, this forum seeks to discuss the new professional profile of the “roboticist” in a dialogue with experts which gives sufficient consideration to software aspects in particular, and thus to provide stimuli for the academic training.
At the Schweinfurt Roboticist Forum, THWS invites the participants to discuss the requirements faced by future robotics engineers who are to bring robots into all kinds of areas of application as universal machines, as well as the needs of the real world. Representatives of business and industry, as well as representatives of interested Bavarian and non-Bavarian higher education institutions, are invited to the forum. Selected international partner higher education institutions are also in-vited to define the professional profile of the “roboticist” and thus to help to shape a bachelor’s degree programme in “Robotics”.

Advantages of an international study program

The internationalisation of degree programmes is an important issue which, in par-ticular, simplifies student and lecturer exchanges and double or multiple degrees throughout the world, gives students basic skills for their future professional envi-ronment and also promotes cross-border collaboration in applied research. There-fore, THWS intends to offer a German-language bachelor’s degree programme in robotics (“Robotik”), which will have an English language counterpart (TWIN Pro-gramme) with the title “Robotics”. This is to be established at international partner higher education institutions in the same form (World TWIN). With the introduction of a degree programme in Robotics at several Bavarian and German universities of applied sciences, this type of higher education institution can continue or consol-idate its tradition as a factory for engineers and can thus also continue to gain in attractiveness.

Promotion of software skills

Such a degree programme corresponds to two Bavarian interests and challenges: Digitalization and the promotion of software expertise in academic training. Further-more, there is no degree programme anywhere in Germany that focusses extensively on the software aspects of robot programming and is simply called “Robotics”. And perhaps the roboticist has the same potential to be a success story in the area of robotics as the computer scientist does in the area of computer science.

Partnership with Shenzhen

The idea of having the professional profile of a robotics engineer, who puts robots into practice, discussed and established jointly by the Bavarian universities of applied sciences and universities of technology came about after a discussion in November 2018 at THWS with Assistant Secretary Schoppik regarding the social tasks of our type of higher education institution and after the cooperation agreement between Shenzhen Technology University (SZTU) and five Bavarian universities of applied sciences was signed in Shenzhen Town Hall two days later.

We hope that this forum will contribute towards anchoring the professional profile of the robotics engineer in the world of work and shaping society’s perception of it with the term “roboticist”.