INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION FOR ROBOTICS EDUCATION.

Through involvement with professional groups and area industry, the University of Houston College of Technology has been able to establish a robotics laboratory. Through our efforts with area chapters of the American Welding Society, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and Robotics International of SME, over 100,000 in robotics equipment has been obtained to augment our instructional laboratory facilities and to enable us to do robotics applications research. The robots are made available to technology students, industrial engineering students, and area manufacturers. The robots have been used to supplement seminars presented by the College of Technology, Industrial Engineering, RI/Houston and AWS. Agreements for obtaining the robots are discussed and conclusions about optimizing robotics education through a joint effort of education and industry are discussed.