PhD in Robotics Engineering
As a robotics graduate student, you’ll work side-by-side with faculty on research that pushes the boundaries of what seems possible—whether it’s developing robotic medical instruments or fine-tuning the smallest, multi-robot swarm robotics.
WPI has a long history as a pioneer in robotics engineering education, giving it a depth and breadth of knowledge. IT was the first university to offer BS through PhD degrees in robotics, and its comprehensive curriculum reflects that deep experience.
As a multidisciplinary field, robotics researchers collaborate to extend their impact.
Robotics impacts humanity in levels as varied as manufacturing to the most delicate surgery. A degree in robotics gives you plentiful job opportunities.
You’ll develop varied skills working within the robotics field. Depending on goals and interests, students can write the software to operate robots, build robots, or explore the ethical implications of robots in a complex human world.
New England is considered the global epicenter for the robotics industry. Opportunities to contribute to important advances in the field exist in nearby academia, established organizations and industries, and start-ups.
The robotics curriculum is purposefully varied. The industry is multilayered, so students take classes that have a business, systems engineering, or entrepreneurial approach.
Faculty Profiles
My research spans robotics, haptics, multi-modal perception, and artificial intelligence, at the intersection of computer science and engineering. There are two highly related themes in my robotics research: one is the focus on “contact sport”, i.e., the contact and interaction between a robot or a part/tool it holds and the environment, and the other is real-time adaptiveness of robots to uncertainty and uncertain changes in an environment based on perception.
An integral part of a rewarding academic career is being an educator. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with students and guide their development to fulfill their potential. I enjoy teaching the fundamentals of robotics engineering, science and technology as well as training students in advanced independent research. I aim to teach students about research-based thinking and problem solving, to give them a real career choice to determine their future in further research or the industry.
Berk's research primarily focuses on problems related to robotic manipulation, which is a key functionality largely missing from the current state of the art in robotics for unstructured environments, including homes, modern warehouses, and collaborative manufacturing stations. He develops multi-modal robotic manipulation strategies mainly focusing on the role of vision feedback for coping with uncertainties of unstructured environments.
My research interests are in the application of robotics and computer science to enhance medicine, and particularly surgery. What gets me out of bed in the morning is the prospect of helping doctors save lives and improve the quality of life of their patients. My students and I work side-by-side with clinical collaborators to create technology that presents a tangible clinical value – for instance, making an existing surgical procedure more accurate or enabling new procedures that are not feasible with current instrumentation.
Professor Fischer is the William Smith Dean's Professor and a faculty member in Robotics Engineering with a appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at WPI. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 from Johns Hopkins University, where he was part of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer Integrated Surgery. At WPI he has been an integral part of developing the Robotics Engineering program and teaches primarily junior-level and graduate courses in Robotics.
My research leverages control theory, formal methods, and machine learning to construct adaptive, provably correct cyber-physical systems with respect to complex specifications. The challenges I am currently interested in include: reactive robotic systems under partial information and modeling uncertainty, multi-robot coordination, optimal control of hybrid systems, and design of adaptive semi-autonomous systems.
The focus of my research is designing innovative tools for swarm robotics. I am developing Buzz, a programming language specifically designed for real-world robot swarms. During my Ph.D., I have designed ARGoS, which is currently the fastest general-purpose robot simulator in the literature. Recent work focuses on human-swarm interaction and multi-robot learning. I am also working on swarm robotics solutions for disaster response scenarios, such as search-and-rescue and firefighting.