Education

Georgia Tech Will Build Nation’s First Open Robotics Lab

January 19th, 2016

Graduate students Matt Hale, Siddharth Mayya and Li Wang used the mini-version of the Robotarium in a test session in the fall of 2015.

RAFTERMEN PHOTOGRAPHY

Georgia Tech is building a new lab that would give researchers and students around the country remote access to its robots.

The new lab, nicknamed the “Robotarium,”will be the first of its kind in the country.

Once it’s up and running in 2017, it is expected to be home to 100 ground and aerial swarm robots or drones.

Middle school and high school students as well as researchers across the country will be able to use it for experiments, to upload programming code to work with the robots and to watch the robots in real-time.

“Building and maintaining a world-class, multi-robot lab is too expensive for a large number of roboticists and budding roboticists,” said electrical and computer engineering professor Magnus Egerstedt. “This creates a steep barrier to entry into our field.

“We need to provide more access to more people in order to continue creating robot-assisted technologies. The Robotarium will allow that.”

Georgia Tech hopes the new lab will also help it to collaborate with other colleges and institutions on research projects.

The National Science Foundation is pitching in $2.5 million in grants to fund the new robot lab. A model mini-lab using GRITSBots was completed and tested in the fall of 2015.