They are here to teach, not to steal your job

The widely held belief that robots cost jobs is a fallacy, a robotics expert says.

Terry Sy, executive director of China RobotC, the only organization authorized in China to promote what is considered one of the world's premier robotics education systems, says: "Many parents have asked me about the future of robots. I tell them that if they want their children never to face unemployment, let them do something related to robots."

RobotC was developed at the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University, the global research university, based in Pittsburgh.

It supports several different robotics platforms and features a variety of functions, including tips and tools for educators and parents on using robotics to teach children about math, science, engineering and physics.

Sy established China RobotC in Xi'an, northwestern China, which is considered the center of China's aerospace, controls and automation market - the perfect location, arguably, to attract the kind of modern young minds who might consider a career in robotics.

"The people who make, apply and repair robots and who teach about robots will always be needed in future."

Speaking at the recent China International Robot Show in Shanghai, Sy said he felt strongly that Carnegie Mellon's programs and systems will be a huge benefit to the teaching of robotics in China, and will help narrow the knowledge gap that exists between Chinese and Western students.

The RobotC programming language has already been translated into 15 languages and used in more than 40 countries.

In the US alone, more than 300 colleges and 10,000 primary and secondary schools are using its curriculum, Sy says.

RobotC is a programming language that uses what is considered an easy-to-use development environment that supports several of the simplest and most commonly used different robotics platforms, including LEGO, VEX PIC, Cortex and Arduino.

It contains firmware that boosts performance and greatly improves program download times, its developers say.

It also features an interactive, run-time debugger, which helps developers find and fix bugs in programs, allowing them to view and edit all of the values that the robot sees - motors, timers, sensors and variables - and quickly pinpoint and troubleshoot problems in programs, greatly reducing the time it takes to develop a program.

"It is easy enough for primary students to learn, but also satisfies the needs of programming experts," Sy says.

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