WVU robotics professor gives demonstration at West Virginia Culture Center

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WOWK) — Members of the public got the chance to learn about the work and research of the WVU robotics program Tuesday at the West Virginia Culture Center.

WVU professor Dr. Jason Gross is the chair of the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering and gave the presentation “From Mars to Mines: Resilient Localization for Robots in GPS-Denied frontiers.”

This part of the department’s work focuses on how to program robotic vehicles to navigate in areas without GPS. These include things like the Mars Rover and drones that can be used for underground search and rescue in mines and other disaster zones. Gross also says this research can eventually help in every day instances like grocery delivery.

“Having a robot understand where it is in the environment is a very core fundamental thing it needs in order to be able to introduce things like autonomous drone delivery, autonomous driving,” Gross said. “All of these technologies right now are heavily dependent on GPS in order for us to have them. If they are in a busy urban area, or a denied environment or even a forest environment, would need to be resilient to not work with GPS.”

Gross’s presentation was part of the STEM Speaker Series, which has a goal of communicating science, technology, engineering and math to all West Virginians.

Gross also said he hopes that talks like these can help lead more students to join the robotics program at WVU.

“It’s always important to try and promote what we’re doing so that way maybe more students want to come and do research or learn about robotics,” Gross said. “At WVU we just started a whole degree program in robotics engineering so we’re really hoping to get the word out about what we’re doing at WVU.”

After the presentation, attendees got a chance to see the program’s work firsthand with Lego robots that had been programmed to complete small tasks like following a line on the floor or dumping a toy pumpkin off of a table.

The next installment of the STEM Speaker Series is expected to be in the spring.