The University of Tehran, also known as Tehran University, is one of Iran’s most prestigious universities today and is located in the central part of the City of Tehran.
Established in 1934, this public Iranian university is considered to be the oldest modern university in the country based on its socio-cultural and political history, and also its research and teaching profile. The school’s history dates back to March 31st, 1931 when the country’s Minister of Court wrote about the requirements needed to set up a university in Tehran to Issa Seddiq, to which the latter replied by making a comprehensive outline for the university.
In January 1933, the acting Ministry of Education said that the city has no university and cited that it is lagging behind other great nations. After this, the government, through its Ministry of Education, mandated for the purchase of a suitable land where the university could be built. The Jalaliyeh garden was selected during the process and, in 1934, the university was officially inaugurated. In 1986, the university’s College of Medicine was separated and became known as the Tehran University of Medical University.
The University of Tehran is home to various research centers, laboratories, and facilities. Some of the major institutes affiliated with the university include the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Institute of Geophysics, the Research Institute of Energy, Planning and Management, the Engineering Optimization Research Group, and the Advanced Material Research Institute among others.
As one of the country’s forerunner in the field of robotics and technology, the University of Tehran has provided special laboratories to students interested in robotics in order to further enhance their training. One of these labs is the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which aims at supporting graduate students in Robotics.
The lab deals with research on cognitive robotics, multiagent learning, biologically inspired learning methods, distributed robotics, object manipulation, and mobile robots. One of the projects developed inside this laboratory is the Pole Climbing Robot, also known as the UT-PCR or University of Tehran Pole Climbing Robot.
This robot is composed of a triangular body with six limbs. It has ordinary wheels at the tip and three upper limbs. The purpose of this robot is to help people clean light bulbs in order to allay manual cleaning, which causes traffic disturbance that can even be hazardous to humans.
Other research projects include the Industrial Robot Controller, Complex Wheel Based Robotic System, and Distributed Object Manipulation. Besides these projects, the University of Tehran is also responsible for the development of the SURENA robots, which is a joint project between the Iranian Industries and Mines and the university.
The SURENA series of robots were developed to walk faster, and recognize faces, objects, words and sentences. This clearly manifests how advanced and sophisticated the University of Tehran has become over the past decades.
