Robotics, Automation, and Manufacturing

The laboratory supports faculty and students researching artificial intelligence and bio-robotics. The lab serves as a center for mechatronics and robotics research and enables the students to learn and practice the advanced techniques and methods used for understanding the behavior of robotics and bio-robotic systems. The lab includes the Self-Driving Car Studio from Quanser, an ideal platform for investigating machine learning, traffic management, multi-vehicle coordination, navigation, planning, and control in the context of self-driving vehicles.

The Industrial Robotics lab allows students to understand, program, and operate the same industrial robots used in industry. The lab includes four standard arm robots and two collaborative robots. Students can become factory-certified in Fanuc's Material and Handling Operations, training that is sought after by
many employers. Students write software, learn robot safety and operating principles, understand the mathematics of movement and sensing, and design and implement a robotics project. Students can also choose to use the robotic cameras and implement vision processing during the project phase of training.

This lab focuses on developing optimal control strategies for dynamic systems using various mathematical frameworks and numerical methodologies. Controllers for robotic applications and defense related scenarios are of particular interest. The main objective of the lab is to implement theoretical solutions on physical hardware.

The lab is equipped with different National Instrument Control Hardware (FPGA, DSP, NI Elvis) and control software (MATLAB, LabVIEW, Arduino), which aids control instrumentation and control hardware development.

The lab has Cohda Wireless Connection Suites to enable vehicular communication performance testing in hardware. The lab maintains licenses for current version of VISSIM to generate and record the trace files of vehicles from different scenarios.