Lessons of A Robot: Building Smarter Engineering at Penn

July 31, 2009

You have to see it to believe it:

A robot, puttering along, gets clobbered -- its parts scattering in all directions -- and then begins to reassemble itself.

This ability -- to design something that reconfigures itself, on the fly, in order to do the best job -- is a specialty of Mark Yim, the Gabel Family Term Junior Professor in Penn's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. It's also a product of Penn's GRASP Lab (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception Lab), a truly interdisciplinary research center focused on robotics, vision, perception, control, automation and learning.

Yim says his robot is one of the first fully active prototypes of a new kind of machine composed of what some researchers call "smart matter": mechanical parts that can function independently and act cooperatively. When his robot, known as ckBot, changes its form, it also changes its function, making self-reconfigurable robots ideal for use in unknown, risky situations like planetary exploration or search-and-rescue missions. Now Yim is researching ways robots can rebuild themselves if destroyed, and go on to finish their tasks -- an action eerily like that of the liquid metal T-1000 cyborg in Terminator 2.

In January 2009, Discover Magazine named Yim's smart-matter robot, "Number 81 of the top 100 stories of 2008."

Smarter Robots, Smarter Engineering

As if inspired by his own robots, associate professor Yim has gone further, applying self-regenerative re-tooling to the engineering classroom itself. As the Undergraduate Curriculum Chair, he's helped reorient his department around a lab-based Practice Integrated Curriculum. He's also pioneered a new master's program in Integrated Product Design -- where students work in partnership with Wharton and PennDesign -- while serving as Faculty Director of Weiss Tech House.

Rather than using traditional methods of teaching and evaluating students, one undergraduate writes, he experiments with methods that engage students creatively. Another colleague sums it up: Mark Yim seamlessly integrates his own research, his classroom instruction, his advising, and his involvement in the Weiss Tech House to truly, deeply teach his students.

It's all designed, Yim says, not only to teach students concepts and skills, but to develop "an engineering way of thinking."

In March 2009, Mark Yim received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in the MEAM Department.

What's ahead? More better engineering!

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Lessons of A Robot: Building Smarter Engineering at Penn