Students and professors keeping up with the age of robotics
Robotics has been recognized at the Technical High School in Slavonski Brod as a step towards a more advanced education. The school has been constantly following labour market trends in the past years and is cooperating with the companies from Croatia and the EU, reports Večernji List on March 7, 2016.
Last year, they withdrew almost 2,5 million kuna from the European Social Fund for the “Robo Challenge” project, which should help students acquire better access to higher education and employment. In cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Electro-Technical and Economic School from Nova Gradiška, they have equipped their lab, launched the robotics school and modernized their outdated curriculum.
“Robotics and automation are the fields of the 21st century. Today, the car industry or any other industry cannot be imagined without automated processes, and this is why we have put a major emphasis on the mobile robotics so that our students and professors can learn how to make, design and program a robot”, said project manager Vikica Lukić.
With the money they withdrew, the school has bought 25 sets that students use to make, program and manage the robots. “We want to instil the programming logic into young people and get a broader picture of what can be done with robots”, Lukić said. Robots are for now used for didactic purposes, but soon they could be used for anything. Students will, for example, create programs for vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, snowplows, and many other devices. Everything will be managed via smartphones.
And students are ecstatic. “It is more interesting than our regular classes. At first, it seemed very complicated, but it wasn’t long before I realized that robotics is not impossible to figure out”, said student Vlatko Lović. Another student, Josip Lozić, added that his participation in workshops allows him to invest into his own future. “I plan to enrol in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and this knowledge will help me in my future job.”
