Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course.

Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised.

If you spend a full year abroad you’ll only pay 15% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year. You won’t pay any tuition fees to your host university

Placement year

Alternatively, you can spend your third year on a placement year with an external organisation, where you learn about a particular sector, company or job role, apply your academic knowledge in a practical working environment, and receive inspiration for future career pathways.

If you complete a placement year you’ll only pay 20% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year.

Our expert staff

We have been one of the leading electronics departments in the country throughout our history, and in recent years, our prolific research staff have contributed to some major breakthroughs.

Our robotics and embedded systems research group works on interdisciplinary research that combines artificial intelligence, embedded systems architecture and technology, sensors and data fusion, autonomous navigation, planning and human-machine interaction.

We research a wide variety of areas, from new drone technology, environment and pollution monitoring to healthcare aids (such as the wheelchair robot and robotic prosthetics). Students will have the opportunity to be involved with current research in their final year projects.

Specialist facilities

Our new unique Robotics Gaming Laboratory offers dedicated space for indoor robots and has 24 VICON cameras for racing car tracking. Our Robot Arena is one hundred square metres in area and has a six metre high ceiling to accommodate flying robots. It has one of the world’s largest powered lab floors for long-duration experiments with mobile robots.

We have invested over £1 million in equipping this state-of-the-art facility with robotic systems which include:

• thirty wheeled mobile robots
• eight flying robots
• three robotic fish
• three intelligent wheelchairs
• one robotic arm
• one robotic hand with five fingers

We also have six laboratories that are exclusively for computer science and electronic engineering students. Three are open 24/7, and you have free access to the labs except when there is a scheduled practical class in progress.

All computers run either Windows 10 or are dual boot with Linux, and software includes Java, Prolog, C++, Perl, Mysql, Matlab, DB2, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and Project.

Your future

Prepare for your future. Robotics and autonomous systems was recognised as one of the eight great technologies by the UK government in 2013. It was estimated the market for both industrial and service robots will be worth more than $66bn by 2025.

As a graduate of our BEng Robotic Engineering, you will be well-placed to take advantage of the growing demand in this area. This is a broad and ever-changing field of study; you will always be learning throughout your career, through following research and trade journals, attending conferences, and working on new research yourself as you create the robots of the future. An incredible 92% of our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering students are in employment or further study (Graduate Outcomes 2020).

Being a robotics engineer means that you could be working on humanoid robotic toys, animatronics equipment for amusement parks, robotic equipment for defusing landmines in war-stricken countries, or robots for space and deep sea exploration. Read more about computer science and electronic engineering career destinations here.

Our recent graduates have gone on to work for a wide range of high-profile companies including:

• National Instruments
• Circad Design Ltd
• McLaren Formula One Team
• B&W Group
• BT
• IBM
• Visa
• Google
• Microsoft

Our department has a large pool of external contacts, ranging from companies providing robots for the media industry, through vehicle diagnostics, to electronic system design and circuit design and manufacture, who work with us and our students to provide advice, placements and eventually graduate opportunities.

We also work with our University’s Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.

Course structure

We offer a flexible course structure with a mixture of core/compulsory modules, and optional modules chosen from lists.

Our research-led teaching is continually evolving to address the latest challenges and breakthroughs in the field. The course content is therefore reviewed on an annual basis to ensure our courses remain up-to-date so modules listed are subject to change.

Teaching and learning disclaimer

Following the impact of the pandemic, we made changes to our teaching and assessment to ensure our current students could continue with their studies uninterrupted and safely. These changes included courses being taught through blended delivery, normally including some face-to-face teaching, online provision, or a combination of both across the year.

The teaching and assessment methods listed show what is currently approved for 2022 entry; changes may be necessary if, by the beginning of this course, we need to adapt the way we’re delivering them due to the external environment, and to allow you to continue to receive the best education possible safely and seamlessly.