Robots, like this turtle bot made by graduate students, are becoming increasingly prevalent in classrooms across the campus.
Today’s robots can be built to resemble anything from microscopic rockets to lifelike beavers, and this university is helping foster the innovation of these automated assistants.
While the idea of building a robot to perform humanlike tasks has been around for centuries, this university is at the forefront of incorporating these devices into the classroom, according to Satyandra Gupta, mechanical engineering professor and director of the Maryland Robotics Center. Not only have these devices cropped up in university courses researchers at this university are advancing industry research in the military and medical fields, Gupta said.
Because the university has various categories of robotics research, outside agencies are continuously looking to forge partnerships with students, faculty and staff, according to Gupta.
This week, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory announced the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco. The conference is teaming up with university microbotics researchers to develop microrockets to use for military surveillance, according to the conference website.
“I think people are beginning to realize Maryland is doing really good in terms of cutting-edge research,” Gupta said.
Additionally, the university is focusing on creating more classes that allow students to build, design and program robots, Gupta said. Currently, the university offers at least five such courses.
“The research side, everybody knows, but the educational side is kind of difficult without being on the inside,” Gupta said.
Working with robots provides students an interactive opportunity to solve technical real-world problems encountered in the engineering field, some professors said.
“The robots provide a concrete platform on which students can investigate ideas,” electrical and computer engineering professor Gil Blankenship wrote in an email.
Many students — such as senior mechanical engineering major David Billet — said robotics classes have helped them to better understand the more tangible programming and engineering aspects that can be applied to other courses and technical concepts.
“I know for me it was the engineering experience: the design and the building and the programming and debugging and eventually seeing it work,” Billet said.
Last semester, Billet took Gupta’s ENME489L: Product Development Using Bio-Inspired Concepts course, in which students were required to build walking robots based on natural organisms. His team drew their inspiration from a beaver.
“We used the bio-inspiration for the initial structure … and also to solve certain problems that we had when we were building them, like how to make the legs move and how we wanted the feet to go,” Billet said. “So we used animal gaits to try to simulate them with what we had.”
Other engineering courses — such as ENEE222: Elements of Discrete Signal Analysis — require students to program robots to operate autonomously in activities, such as playing sports or racing through a maze.
“The robots are learning tools, enabling the students to experiment with different ideas for problem solving and to see those ideas succeed or fail immediately,” Blankenship wrote in an email.
Some classes — such as ENME489C: Medical Robotics and ENME489O: Micro/Nano Robotics — are designed to fulfill practical applications, such as potentially assisting surgeons and other professionals with the student-designed robots, Gupta said.
Several students said they gained valuable experience from building a robot from start to finish.
“I feel like the hands-on experience, not only with design but also with building and programming electronics, was really useful because it really got to integrate a lot of things that they know are necessary for the engineering process,” Billet said. “In this case it’s more than just a static thing — it’s a complete moving assembly.”
marcot@umdbk.com
