The focus of OSU’s robotics and autonomous systems research cluster is the design, modeling and control of systems that observe, move within, interact with, and act upon their environment. Such systems include mobile robots, micro-aerial vehicles and large active sensor networks. The application domains within this research cluster include bipedal and hexapedal robot locomotion, winged and rotor-based micro-aerial vehicle control, robot navigation, multi-robot coordination and distributed sensor network optimization.  This program has its home in Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, but draw faculty from many other disciplines such as forestry, agriculture, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, geology, and civil engineering. OSU now offers Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Robotics or a double major such as Robotics and Computer Science. 

The proposed degrees will provide an integrated program that will embrace the multi-disciplinary nature of robotics. The program will be directed towards advanced studies related to robotics and include core areas of concentration from each of the disciplines:  actuation, locomotion, manipulation, dynamics, control (Mechanical Engineering); sensors, vision, motors (Electrical Engineering); artificial intelligence, human robot interactions (Computer Science)

Oregon State assumed stewardship of the Robot Operating System (ROS) software infrastructure. ROS is an open-source software infrastructure for robotics that is rapidly becoming the de facto standard in academia and industry and is mandated in a number of well-funded government programs. The OSU Open Source Lab is now the primary hosting site for ROS, supporting an estimated 100,000 users worldwide. This is just one more step to cementing Oregon State’s position as a hub for robotics.