Robots fail to spark interest

Students are proving uninterested in creating the robots needed for Britain's future factories as numbers enrolling for manufacturing courses continue to fall.

Two leading university-based groups in the Midlands report that people from overseas take up most places on masters courses that feature robotics.

Of the 150 students pursuing engineering management at the University of Warwick, a course with a significant focus on robotics, 5 per cent are from the United Kingdom, at the University of Coventry just under 8 per cent are.

Ken Young, head of the International Manufacturing Centre at Warwick, said:

"If we are to maintain any manufacturing industry here, it is important that this trend is reversed."

The British Automation and Robotics Association, which brings together proponents from academe and industry, has moved its headquarters to Warwick and is considering a radical overhaul of its structures in a bid to breathe new life into the field.

Dr Young said the television show Robot Wars had generated a great deal of interest in robotics among schoolchildren but that potential applicants for robotics courses were discouraged because of national prejudice against manufacturing in general.

Yet he said that British industry's need for automated technology for tasks such as spot welding or injection moulding would grow rather than diminish.

Ashraf Jawaid, the Jaguar professor of manufacturing at Coventry, agreed that there was a problem: "The UK will be left behind in manufacturing techniques and technologies."

He said that the decline in interest was in part due to the universities' unwillingness to purchase the expensive robotic equipment needed to keep their laboratories up to date. In Coventry, the robotics lab has been downgraded in recent years.

Nevertheless, Professor Jawaid argued that the stark masters course recruitment figures were in part mitigated by UK students going into manufacturing after their first degree and pursuing further courses on a part-time basis.

At the University of Reading, Kevin Warwick said his cybernetics group was bucking the trend, attracting growing numbers of applicants. Most came from within the UK. "There's a downturn in engineering in general, but we're doing sexier things than most so we feel we're moving forwards," he said.