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Connor Mann, mechanical and aerospace engineering student and URC team CEO, is excited to work in the field of robotics.
MORGANTOWN — In the heart of West Virginia University, a new chapter in tech innovation is unfolding — one driven by sensors, algorithms and limitless imagination.
The robotics program in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources is more than a collection of high-tech labs and cutting-edge machines — it’s a dynamic ecosystem where aspiring engineers design, build and program the next generation of intelligent systems.
Whether they’re crafting autonomous drones, fine-tuning robotic arms or preparing for national competitions, students and faculty are pushing the boundaries of what machines can do. But beyond the hardware and code, the growing program fosters critical thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration and real-world problem-solving — skills that define the future of engineering.
“Robotics is one of the fastest growing areas in engineering, and it has relevance to many disciplines,” said Yu Gu, Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni professor and director of the Interactive Robotics Laboratory. “If you think about industrial revolutions providing more machine power to the system, now we give more brain power to all the systems we have built so far. So we’re trying to create systems that are more intelligent and can deal with complex situations and environments.”
The Statler College has been at the forefront of every pioneering development since it first opened its doors in 1887 — a time when advances in mechanical engineering were leading to the creation of intricate, self-operating machines — the origin of today’s modern robotics. In the 1970s, as the microprocessing revolution pushed personal electronic devices into the mainstream, Statler began developing innovative computer science programs.
Since the Statler College began offering robotics courses in 2011, the program has grown to include a new four-year robotics major with a robust capstone, a minor degree option and strategic focus areas in mobile robotics, manipulators and autonomy. The Evansdale campus is now home to 10 labs dedicated to innovative education, research and development in robotics across multiple engineering departments.
“It’s really exciting for WVU to be on the forefront of something, to be one of the first few schools to have a dedicated robotics engineering undergraduate degree, to also be a research university jumping into this space,” said Jason Gross, professor and chair of the MMAE department and director of the Navigation Research Laboratory. “It really is exciting to kind of be ahead of the game and to see us continue to grow in this field.”
Electrical and Computer Engineering assistant professor Amr El-Wakeel founded WVU’s F1Tenth student team to compete in the Roboracer organization F1Tenth race, an international competition that challenges teams to build a scaled autonomous race car for the annual Grand Prix. The WVU team secured second place in its very first participation last September at the IEEE International Conference on Smart Mobility in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
“F1Tenth is one-tenth of an actual Formula One car but it’s 10 times the fun and a great learning experience,” El-Wakeel said. “Students can mount the sensors, they can work on the computing boards and all the specifics of the car and this enables experiential learning on perception, path planning, control and intelligence.”
With a strong track record of victories, WVU teams put theory into action, designing and programming robots to tackle complex tasks.
“One of the great things for students getting involved in robotics is that as an undergraduate student, you can kind of brush up against the limits of what has been done so far,” said Connor Mann, mechanical and aerospace engineering student and URC team CEO. “So even as an undergrad, you can do things that probably haven’t been done before in this exact application in robotics. I think it’s really hard in a lot of other fields to kind of brush up against the edge of our knowledge at such an early level.”
These competition experiences mirror real-world industry challenges and sharpen student problem-solving, teamwork and technical skills. From autonomous navigation to controlling robotic arms used in manufacturing, students gain hands-on expertise that translates into careers in robotics, AI and automation — ensuring they graduate not just with knowledge, but with the experience to lead.
Roboticists at WVU are also experimenting with using leading-edge technology to respond to some of today’s most pressing challenges. Sharp declines in nature’s pollinator species like bees and butterflies signal big trouble for the future of agriculture. Through NSF and USDA grants, researchers like Gross and Gu are working to apply innovative automation technologies to enhance food security.
“It’s a very challenging project because every plant is a living creature and every flower is unique,” Gu explained. “It’s very difficult to interact with individual flowers leading to successful pollination. We’ve been working across college with people from agriculture in terms of entomology and horticulture to study bee-flower interaction behaviors, and also with industrial engineers to understand how humans will interact with agriculture robots. And more importantly, we’re working on system designs and robot autonomy to enable robots to do this kind of thing.”
In his Neuromechanical Intelligence Laboratory, mechanical engineering assistant professor Nick Szczecinski researches ways to apply animal motions to robots with legs in order to improve their mobility and enhance their applications in diverse scenarios.
“Robotics is a highly interdisciplinary field. It requires people with backgrounds in computer science and in mechanical engineering and electronics, in many different fields,” Szczecinski said. “So it’s inherently drawing many different people with many different backgrounds to one common place, which then leads to more creative and complete solutions to problems. The scale of problems that we’re facing in the 21st century are going to require large-scale automation and a lot of robotics applications, and so I think there’s no better time to get into that space than now.”
In the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, faculty like El-Wakeel are ensuring that large-scale applications of robotics improve our lives while keeping us safe. El-Wakeel founded and runs the Intelligent Cyber-physical Systems Research Lab, which focuses on multimodality sensing applications and artificial intelligence (AI) for systems, vehicles and robots to help them better adapt to different contexts. His research, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aims to improve AI security so robots can remain functional, safe and adapt to challenging environments.
“For the vehicles and the robots to perform better, they need the involvement of artificial intelligence, but to run the machines autonomously and make them navigate within the different environments you need this AI to be trustworthy and secure,” El-Wakeel said.