Slugbotics is a student organization at UC Santa Cruz focused on introducing students to hands-on robotics engineering, founded in 2017. In the 2018-2019 school year, our team designed, fabricated, and programmed BIG SLAB. Our second ROV, BIG SLAB is capable of performing various tasks in the MATE competition including object deployment and manipulation, water quality sensing, and autonomous analysis. Since then, we have continued to grow and learn, tackling new projects, and introducing others to the field of robotics.
Slugbotics is organized as a student organization under the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, in partnership with the Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (CPSRC) and the UCSC’s Sustainability Lab (S-lab). Our connections enable us to give students access to resources such as machining and electronics equipment that would otherwise be out of reach, and by doing so present them an opportunity to gain hands-on engineering experience.
New members are welcome to join at any time! In fall quarter, we teach an onboarding course in partnership with the Sustainability Lab, which teaches many useful skills such as CAD, electrical design, and embedded programming. However, this course is completely optional and not necessary at all to join any of our subteams. To get started, join our Discord server at discord.slugbotics.com!