“There’s a large and increasing demand for master’s-level expertise in this area as evidenced by the hiring of my students, local postings, the number of companies expressing interest in being program partners, etc.,” Kitts says. This kind of automation technology, he continues, “is rapidly evolving, it is pervasive across numerous industries, requires truly interdisciplinary knowledge, and motivates issues outside of engineering that SCU is uniquely positioned to address.”
Because of Santa Clara’s Silicon Valley location, robotics master’s students can gain real-world experience with a wide variety of industry partners and truly impact the the world while still in school. And, as with all of SCU’s educational programs, this one includes examining the ethical implications of automation and producing things that help humans, not harm them.
The first student recruited and accepted to the program, Michael Aboh ’23, says he was attracted to the kinds of projects being developed in the Robotics Systems Laboratory. “I remember seeing a video about the RSL on YouTube and how it was involved in making robots for land, sea, air applications, even agricultural robots,” he says. “That was a big difference from other labs I was looking at, most of which had very narrow areas of research.”
Aboh is an international student from Nigeria and says the kind of automation he’s studying could make a big impact on the people back home. A major problem there, Aboh says, is lack of food, caused in part by an underfunded agricultural sector, and too few farmers. “One of my dreams has always been to come into the space of agricultural automation, not just in my home country but on the global stage,” he says. “My main motivation is the belief that no one deserves to be hungry or food insecure.”