National Taiwan University
NTU, or National Taiwan University, which is situated in Taipei, Taiwan, is the country’s national coeducation research university. It was established in 1928 by the Japanese administration during the time when the Japanese ruled the area. It was then known as the Taihoku Imperial University.
Intended to educate the Japanese nationals, the university had a Faculty of Liberal Arts and a Faculty of Science and Agriculture, and taught 60 students. In 1935, the university added the Faculty of Medicine, and eight years later, in the middle of World War II, the Faculty of Engineering was added.
After the Second World War, the country continued the administration of Taihuko University, reorganized it as an institution for Chinese speaking students, and on November 15, 1945, it was renamed as the National Taiwan University.
NTU has 11 colleges: College of Liberal Arts, College of Science, College of Social Science, College of Medicine, College of Engineering, College of Bio-resource and Agriculture, College of Management, College of Public Health, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College of Law and College of Life Science. There are a total of 54 departments, 103 graduate institutes and four research centers. It also has the School of Dentistry and the School of Pharmacy.
Over the last few decades, the university has continually expanded. Part of this expansion is going into the field of robotics. Its president aims to make the country the global center for the design, manufacture and use of intelligent robots by 2020.
To jump start this, a team of mechanical engineers at the university have developed an energy- efficient, leg-wheel hybrid mobile robot, capable of driving quickly and smoothly on a flat terrain. It used the NI LabView and CompactRIO to develop this robot. The university is also a regular fixture in RoboCup and often sends a team of soccer- playing robots at this competition.
