Robotics

Robotics

Welcome

The Colorado School of Mines offers both graduate and undergraduate opportunities to study robotics. For undergraduate students there are relevant courses and specializations in several departments across campus. For example, students can choose to focus on robotics and intelligent systems, robotics and automation, and/or robotics and design. Follow the undergraduate program link for more information.

The Mines Robotics graduate program is an interdisciplinary program that unites faculty, coursework, and research opportunities from the Departments of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and the Division of Engineering, Design, and Society, creating an educational experience that reflects the inherently interdisciplinary and systems-oriented nature of the field of robotics. The program features a core curriculum focused on four robotics focus areas, while also giving students flexibility to choose electives to develop their depth of expertise. Graduates have the cutting-edge skills needed for robotics careers in either research or industry.

professor with robot

Tom Williams wins NSF CAREER Award to improve robotic communication skills.

What if robots had working memory? Williams aims to find out.

Tom Williams, assistant professor of computer science at Mines, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for work aimed at improving the ability of robots to communicate in human-like ways — inspired by how the actual human mind processes information.

Cognitive psychology is the field of scientific study that explores the operation of human mental processes related to perceiving, thinking, language, memory and more.

Williams will receive $549,999 over five years for his project, “Cognitively-Informed Memory Models for Language-Capable Robots,” which will apply lessons from cognitive psychology in hopes of developing working memory processes in robots.

“Working memory refers to the small amount of information that humans are able to keep on hand and manipulate in the context of cognitive processing,” Williams said.

Here, he answers a few questions about his research and why the constrained size of working memory is actually a good thing, for humans and potentially robots. More

Robotics Blog

Official Hub for the
Robotics Program at Mines

  • MIRRORLab Summer Speakers 2024
    The Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab (MIRRORLab) is excited to announce its invited speakers for Summer 2024! We’re excited to feature eight fantastic Ph.D. students this summer, from around th …
  • MIRRORLab Summer Speakers 2023
    The Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab (MIRRORLab) is excited to announce its invited speakers for Summer 2023! We’re excited to feature five fantastic Ph.D. students this summer, from around the …
  • The future of [socially assistive] robots need not be autonomous
    Why socially assistive robots ought to be teleoperated, and how that changes the way we think about themThis post is a summary of “Practical, Ethical, and Overlooked: Teleoperated Socially Assistive R …
  • The Impact of Robot Group Presentation Strategies on Mental Model Formation
    This post is a summary of “You Had Me at Hello: The Impact of Robot Group Presentation Strategies on Mental Model Formation” that was presented at HRI 2022 earlier this year and was coauthored by myse …
  • MIRRORLab Summer Speakers 2022
    The Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab (MIRRORLab) is excited to announce its invited speakers for Summer 2022! We’re excited to feature five fantastic Ph.D. students this summer, from around the …
  • How Therapists Control Robots when used in Therapy with Children with Autism
    This post is a summary of “Analyzing Teleoperation Interface Usage of Robots in Therapy for Children with Autism” that will appear at IDC 2021 and was coauthored by myself (Saad Elbeleidy), Daniel Ros …
(Dataquest Magazine, August, 2021)

“Long-run perspectives for robotics remain excellent.”