With $1 million in NASA funding, West Virginia University is preparing its undergraduates and students across West Virginia to build the robots that will build the future.

The funding supports the fall 2024 launch of a new undergraduate robotics engineering degree, including state-of-the-art new equipment and laboratories at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, as well as substantial additional robotics supplies and support for enhancing K-12 outreach programs.

“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 accomplishments 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,” Jason Gross, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, said.

“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.”

Upgrading to or purchasing advanced technologies means the robotic engineering students can design drones that fly themselves, build a “swarm robot” or run experiments on a giant robotic fruit fly.

WVU will also bring these kinds of technologies out into the state by hosting middle school and high school robotics competitions, enhancing Statler College summer camps and offering merit badge courses at WVU Merit Badge University, among other engagement opportunities.

“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,” Gross said. “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 needs WVU to train roboticists to design solutions for planetary and lunar exploration, for example, or for servicing satellites in orbit. The new major will prepare students to get those aerospace jobs, but Gross said they’ll focus equally on opportunities in industrial robotics through partnerships with local businesses.

“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.”

The facility will be used in the industrial robotics capstone course that WVU started offering through a collaboration with Toyota Motors Manufacturing in West Virginia to utilize robots to solve manufacturing problems in the Toyota plant.

“With the new lab, our goal is to expand the course to help other companies, including the mining and aerospace industries in our region,” Gross said. “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.”

Elsewhere, in the Gross Navigation Laboratory, which has led multiple projects on robot-drone coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense, students will research how robots navigate the world with or without GPS.

Down the hall in the Field and Aerial Robotics lab, they’ll train drones to help map dangerous underground areas in limestone and coal mines.

Meanwhile, the Interactive Robotics Lab will continue developing its innovative six-armed precision pollination robot with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“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,” Gross said.