RoboAI Academy

The RoboAI Academy is a teaching format based at Satakunta University of Applied Sciences' RoboAI Joint Use Laboratory, focusing on practical projects and building concrete technological skills.

In practice, the RoboAI Academy means that students selected to study at the academy will complete their studies by working on various real-world technology projects. The topics of the projects come from companies and communities in the region and always have a concrete need, i.e. the projects always aim to provide the customer with new knowledge and results based on concrete experiments/tests that will enable the customer to modernise its production or even create a new product or service. The outcome of a project carried out by the academy students may be, for example, a technology information package, an example of a robotic application or an AI solution for a company, a production simulation or experimental knowledge on the possibilities of modernising a production cell.

Background  

Continuous development of content and tools, and the renewal of the equipment and software used, are essential features of engineering education. This development is aimed at ensuring that graduating engineers have the necessary level of substantive knowledge. On the other hand, the learning environment should mimic the industrial environment and culture. Today, industrial design is based directly on customer needs. The customer usually has a problem that needs to be solved in one way or another. The environment in which graduating engineers find themselves is networked and international. The work involves projects that require a wide range of multidisciplinary skills and the ability to collaborate.  

The RoboAI Academy, originally known as the Robotics Academy, was born out of a collaboration between teachers passionate about engineering education and technology development. The Academy is backed by a group of teachers who conduct extensive research and work closely with companies. They see learning new things, technology knowledge exploration, experimentation and collaboration as the basis for all their skills. They wanted to pass on the same feeling and approach to their students. The vision of a new kind of degree-level education in automation technology was born, where learning is based on solving ICT assignments from companies and working in teams.

The RoboAI Academy approach  

Teamwork and project management skills, enthusiasm, optimism and the ability to find solutions that fit the situation will play an important role in future working life. The RoboAI Academy's approach aims to ensure that graduating students are as ready as possible to jump straight into the working world and take responsibility for various project tasks. Inquiry-based learning and problem-based learning ensure that students have sufficient depth and relevance of knowledge and that they are confident in their own knowledge search and problem-solving skills and can use these skills in different situations.

RoboAI Academy students work in the RoboAI lab to design, implement and document various technology projects for companies. Practical experiments and finding different solutions play a major role. Two to five students usually work on a project. The size of the project team depends on the scope of the project and the level of competence of the students involved. Project topics can range from literature reviews to building, experimenting and testing practical applications. Often, companies hope that students will bring new insights and clear, concrete experiments and tests on how something should be done. The comments from companies show how most projects respond to questions or challenges posed by the company and also bring a lot of information to the company that was not even asked for.