NASA funds new West Virginia University robotics engineering degree program with $1 million gift
A $1 million gift from NASA has served as the seed for a new robotics engineering degree program at West Virginia University Institute of Technology which will prepare students for jobs both in aerospace and in industrial robotics.
Students at West Virginia University Institute of Technology will soon be receiving the education and training needed to build the robots that will build the future, thanks to $1 million in NASA funding.
The funding will go to support the establishment of a new undergraduate robotics engineering degree set to launch in the Fall 2024 semester. More information about the program can be found on the program's webpage. Part of the funding includes new state of the art laboratories and equipment at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, and a boost to the materials and support needed for various K-12 outreach programs.
In an article on West Virginia University’s website about the new program, professor and chair for the Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, Jason Gross, commented on the program, saying, “This new bachelor of science program in robotics engineering builds on the success of our existing research programs in the area of robotics — and on the success of WVU engineering students who have been competing against the best robotics teams in the world even before we offered them the chance to major in this field.”
He then went on to note that “Over the past ten years, our robotics teams have placed first at nine national or international competitions, including the 2023 University Rover Challenge overall, where we beat out 104 teams from 15 countries. Our students have earned the opportunity to become top competitive candidates for jobs in robotics, which the World Economic Forum recently named as one of the top 10 fastest growing professions. The labs we’ll upgrade and create to support this new program are going to be incredible spaces for education and research, with resources unique to WVU.”
The purchase or upgrades of advanced robotics technologies means that students in the robotics engineering program will have access to doing things such as running experiments on a giant robotic fruit fly, build what is called a swarm robot, or design drones that are able to fly themselves.
West Virginia University will also be bringing technologies like this and more outside of the state as it hosts high school and middle school robotics competitions, offers merit badge courses at WVU Merit Badge University, enhance Statler College Summer camps, and other community engagement events.
Goss added context to all of this by saying, “Over the past decade, there has been a major increase in the exposure that K-12 students in West Virginia are receiving to robotics in their classrooms and through extracurriculars. That has driven the interest undergraduate students are showing in the field and we are excited to contribute to expanding that pre-college exposure.”
NASA’s decision to fund this program at West Virginia University comes from a need for people who are trained roboticists that can design solutions for lunar and planetary exploration such as servicing orbital satellites. The new major at WVU will help prepare students to get aerospace jobs like those at NASA, but Gross noted that the program will also focus on job opportunities in industrial robots through partnerships with businesses in the region.
“Beyond the improvements to our labs for mobile robotics and aerial drones, we’re going to create a new lab for robotic manipulators, which are the jointed robotic arms you see performing assembly tasks in factories, or tasks like welding in manufacturing plants. We’re acquiring certification kits so our instructors will have the potential to certify not only our students but members of local industry — engineers as well as technicians — on operating industrial robots,” said Gross.
The facility will be utilized by students during their industrial robots capstone course, which was made available thanks to a collaboration between the school and Toyota Motors Manufacturing, which uses robotics to alleviate manufacturing issues in their West Virginia plant.
Gross talked about the new lab, saying, “With the new lab, our goal is to expand the course to help other companies, including the mining and aerospace industries in our region. But also, students can use the lab to research cooperative robotics, where two robots collaborate, each one mimicking a human arm, to do tasks like cooking, folding clothes or — more interesting to an organization like NASA — constructing extraterrestrial habitations.”
In other parts of the Gross Navigation Laboratory, students will take on several projects on robot-drone coordination through a collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense, and students will be able to learn about how robots move through the world both with and without the aid of GPS.
In the Field and Aerial Robotics lab, students will train drones to be able to map hazardous underground areas such as coal and limestone mines.
Students working in the Interactive Robotics lab will contribute to the development of the lab’s six armed precision pollination robot, which is made possible through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Gross went on to talk about the wealth of possibilities ahead, saying, “From acquiring new Lego robotics kits that we’ll use with middle schoolers in outreach activities, to creating a space where students can manufacture flexible parts for bendable robots in the Neuro-Mechanical Intelligence lab, WVU is leveraging every resource to design and build our next-gen roboticists right here in West Virginia.”
More information about West Virginia University Institute of Technology can be found at the school’s website.