Search for: All records

Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) is a growing engineering discipline focused on the creation of smart and autonomous systems and processes in an integrated and interdisciplinary fashion towards improving the quality of human lives. Despite the growing need for MRE professionals and increasing numbers of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, this field does not yet enjoy recognition as a distinct and identifiable discipline. A distinct and identifiable engineering discipline must address four questions: 1) What is the body of knowledge that practitioners must master? 2) What skills must practitioners demonstrate? 3) What are the ways of thinking that permeate the discipline? 4) How do practitioners define and distinguish the discipline? Within the MRE community, there is disagreement over how these questions are addressed, and hence, whether and how to define a unified “mechatronics and robotics engineering” discipline or to differentiate “mechatronics engineering” from “robotics engineering”. Four groups of stakeholders were identified: prospective students, current students, educators, and industry professionals. An online survey with common sections on definitions of “mechatronics engineering” and “robotics engineering” and stakeholder-specific questions about differentiators was distributed to stakeholders via email invitation. Quantitative data analysis was used to code and categorize responses. Preliminary data analysis results for categories and codes are presented.