Automation and Robotics
Choose your path
New to the field, already working in a plant, or still in high school? There’s a starting point here for each of you. Every award below tells you who it fits best.
These four awards stack. Start with a short certificate, go to work, and come back later. Every credit you earn counts toward the next award, all the way up to the two-year degree.
Best for trying out the field with no experience needed. A short, hands-on start that leads to entry-level work or straight into the next certificate.
Best for workers adding hands-on automation skills. Leads to technical roles in production and maintenance.
Best if you want to be the go-to fixer on the floor. Leads to technician jobs running and repairing robotic systems.
The full two-year degree. Leads to system design, engineering support, and leadership roles, or transfer toward a bachelor’s.
What is automation and robotics?
Automation and robotics is about keeping the machines that make things running. Factories, food producers, and warehouses across southern 星空无限传媒 use robotic arms, conveyors, and computer-controlled equipment to build and package products. Someone has to set those machines up, program them, fix them when they break, and find better ways to use them.
That someone could be you. You do not need any experience with robots or programming to start here. If you like solving problems, working with your hands, and seeing how things work, you already have what it takes to begin.
Career outlook
Median pay for industrial machinery mechanics and maintenance workers1
Projected job growth from 2024 to 2034, much faster than average1
Job openings expected each year across the U.S.1
Companies in our region need people who can keep automated equipment running, and they often cannot find enough of them. Graduates work as automation technicians, maintenance technicians, and robotics technicians at food producers, manufacturers, and warehouses close to home.
1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Industrial Machinery Mechanics, Machinery Maintenance Workers, and Millwrights, May 2024 national data.
What you will learn
You will train on real equipment, not just textbooks. Depending on your path, you will learn to wire and read electrical circuits, program PLCs (the small computers that control factory machines), operate and program robotic arms, troubleshoot equipment when it stops working, and design automated systems that solve real production problems.
