Mechanical Engineering

It's more than building robots - it's building robots that work

When we teach mechanical engineering to children, we're teaching them how to build robots that work. These machines will do exactly the task for which they are designed. They will be as complex as necessary while being as simple as possible. They will be efficient. They will be safe to operate. They will use all their parts. They will not waste any motion. They will conserve space. Elegance is key.

Great Minds Robotics prepares your daughters and sons for higher education in and employment in mechanical engineering. We know the secret to making it fun.

This discipline in the real world requires understanding structural analysis, materials science, thermodynamics, kinematics, mechanics and more.

Great Minds Robotics focuses on the mechanics, namely robotics and a little bit of mechatronics.

Mechatronics is a combination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and software engineering that is concerned with integrating mechanical and electrical engineering to create hybrid systems. If we add software-based instructions, machines can be automated through the use of electric motors, servo-mechanisms, and other electrical systems. You can see a mechatronics system at work in a CD-ROM drive. Mechanical systems move the tray, spin the CD and position the laser, while an optical system reads the pits or reflections on the CD and converts them to data. Built-in software directs the process and communicates the information on the CD to the computer.

Don't worry, we won't require your kids to design CD-ROM drives, but if you enroll them here at Great Minds Robotics they will be more likely to know how to do things like that later in life (and they'll probably look forward to it).