Welcome! The University of Utah Robotics Center (UURC) consists of faculty and graduate students from the School of Computing, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Department of Mechanical Engineering with a curriculum that imparts fundamental knowledge about robotics and specific courses in mechanics, control, cognition, perception, human-robot interaction, and robot design.
Robotics is the intelligent connection of perception to action. The University of Utah is pleased to offer the second graduate program in robotics in the U.S., with a curriculum that imparts fundamental knowledge about robotics and specific courses that spans the fundamental areas of perception to action. Reflecting robotics’ interdisciplinary nature, the Robotics faculty and the curriculum show equal involvement from the School of Computing, the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. We are excited to announce that Robotics MS and PhD degrees, a graduate certificate, and an undergraduate certificate and minor are available starting Fall 2024! See the Academics tab for more information.
A varied research program addresses diverse topics such as intelligent agents, hybrid mobile robots, humanoid robots, haptic interfaces, and personal assistive devices. The field of robotics has expanded tremendously since its early focus on industrial robots, and now includes very diverse topics such as autonomous vehicles, medical robots, smart sensor networks, microrobots, robot vacuum cleaners, sentry robots, and pet robots. Robotics technology is embedded in many devices which are not usually thought of as robots. A knowledge of how to model motion and an emphasis on real-time computation finds application in graphics, animation, and computer games. Due to the extraordinary breadth of disciplines that robotics encompasses, roboticists have been described as universal engineers, able to apply their expertise and adapt to a wide variety of topics.
Utah is world-famous for the robotics systems it has produced, including manipulators such as the Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand and the Sarcos Dextrous Arm, humanoid robots such as DB2, entertainment robots such as Disney figures and Jurassic Park the Ride dinosaurs, and virtual reality systems such as the Sarcos Treadport and Biport. Faculty expertise is especially strong in the design of novel robot systems, including rehabilitation robotics, surgical robots, micro robots, aerial vehicles, precision positioning, and bio-inspired locomoting mechanisms, acutators, and sensors.