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Think about doing an internship for free. Gil adds, “Sometimes it’s difficult to get in, but keep trying. What’s their best advice for getting internships and jobs? Perseverance! “Just find someone who works in robotics and ask them for advice,” says Matt. Matt got an internship at Bluefin during the summer between his junior and senior years and was then offered a job following graduation.

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When one of his friends got a job at Bluefin, Gil learned about the company and then applied to be a software engineer. During one summer, Gil worked for the Naval Research Laboratory doing software artificial intelligence research and then, after graduating, spent the summer preparing for another AAAI competition.

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If you’re interested in a lot of things–physics, math, science, engineering, communications, and others–you’ll do well.īoth got Gill and Matt did summer internships during college that provided them with work experience and an idea of how to get a job in robotics. Liberal arts universities and colleges will also give you the skills you need to do robotics. The bottom line, both Gil and Matt agree, is that you don’t have to go to an engineering school. I took an artificial intelligence class where we started playing with Lego robots, using Handyboards and sensors.” Gil really got interested in robotics through AAAI robotics competitions (imagine creating a robot that can serve hors d’oeuvres!), and when he graduated with a degree in computer science, a lot of his experience was with robots. “I wanted to focus on artificial intelligence. At Swarthmore College, he was inspired by computer science. Gil, on the other hand, was a good student in high school, but didn’t start out in robotics either–he was more interested in political science. His main interest? Helping robots and computers learn complex behaviors. He took classes in psychology, philosophy, anthropology, human brain and behavior, and artificial intelligence to work his way to a degree in cognitive science. Studying something I liked really made it all worthwhile.” In college at Vassar, Matt took his interests in biology and computers even further. Once I got into college, though, I realized I wanted to focus on my interests.

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“I got into college by the skin of my teeth. “I was a classic underachiever in high school,” says Matt. Bluefin’s AUVs are small, unmanned submarines that use on-board artificial intelligence to complete survey tasks with little or no human supervision.Īlthough Matt and Gil do the same job now, the difference in how they got there shows there really is no single path to robotics. Gil Jones and Matt Zucker may seem like regular guys just out of college–but they have one of the coolest jobs around! They are both software engineers for Bluefin Robotics, a company that makes underwater robots, otherwise known as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Think you’ll never use high school math? Think again…

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