Steve Preston hopes the recent BattleBots competition will spark local student interest in learning more about a $500 billion emerging industry.

“We’ve developed an all-around program to give an understanding of the robotics industry,” said Preston, robotics instructor at the Precision Manufacturing Institute, an industrial training center in Meadville.

Robotics is expected to grow to a $500 billion industry, according to Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon has the largest robotics research organization in the world and is working to develop a robotics research corridor in western Pennsylvania.

The use of robotics is growing in northwestern Pennsylvania with at least 15 pieces of robotics equipment put in use in Crawford County and 40 in Erie County in the last two years, Preston said.

The equipment is being used for welding, manufacturing, painting, assembly and parts handling.

“The industry is just growing rapidly,” he said. “There are now two-dimensional and three-dimensional vision robots that can reach into a bin, pull a part out and do whatever you want it to do with the part.”

PMI has developed a fully accredited 2+2+2 program that goes in two-year increments in robotics technology and robotics maintenance that is readying for this fall. After each level, students can exit the program with a certificate, associate’s degree or bachelor’s degree.

“It’s not just robots, but the applications used for each of the components of robots and robotic work systems — like a tool at the end of the robot arm, (robot) sensory control, motion control and (robot) programming,” Preston said.

“Once they have gone through the program they’ll be able to perform maintenance or develop and design work cells that use robots.”

Five students at the Crawford County Area Vocational-Technical School this spring took an introductory course in robotic applications.

He’s hoping to attract more students into robotics this fall given the success of the northwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association’s BattleBots IQ competition in May.

Designed to stimulate student interest in technical careers, there were 15 student teams that built robots to do battle against each other. While building the robots, students also learned math, science, engineering and manufacturing skills as they applied classroom theory to robot building.

Students from vo-tech schools in Crawford, Clarion, Venango or Mercer counties will begin the PMI robotics program their junior year of high school. They then can earn up to 15 credits to use toward an associate’s degree from Edinboro, Clarion or California universities of Pennsylvania.

The third two-year level involves course work at Edinboro, Clarion or California that results in an associate’s degree in manufacturing engineering technology from Edinboro, an associate’s in applied science in industrial technology from Clarion or an associate’s degree in technical studies from California.