A Unique Approach to Preparing Roboticists for Industry

For the past couple of years, Duke Engineering has been working steadily and intentionally to grow its curriculum focused on robotics. New faculty have launched several classes that form the basis of robotics certificates offered independently to undergraduate and graduate students.

Now, the school is launching a new, comprehensive Master of Engineering in Robotics & Autonomy, slated to welcome new students in the fall semester of 2025.

Along with two new faculty members and a handful of new classes, the master’s program combines options from existing graduate certificate tracks to provide students with a solid foundation to immediately enter industry positions as full-stack roboticists, even if they have little or no experience with robotics coming into the program.

“We see a need in the market for experts in robotics and autonomy, and our new master’s program will offer a breadth and depth of training that is currently extremely rare to find in undergraduate programs alone,” said Siobhan Oca, assistant professor of the practice of mechanical engineering and materials science and director of master’s studies in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science. “And, with Duke’s existing interdisciplinary strengths in computer engineering, medicine and ethics, we are well-positioned to offer a strong and unique curriculum to our students.”

Duke Engineering’s undergraduate certificate in robotics and automation already features over a dozen senior-level class options that provide students with a foundation in the field.

Introductory courses teach students basic concepts that every roboticist should know, such as the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware package, designing and building walking robots from scratch, case studies on ethics, and controls and dynamics. The program also offers electives on various levels of machine learning and interdisciplinary studies in the humanities and social sciences.

The master’s certificate, meanwhile, assumes students already have many of these core competencies and offers advanced courses in a range of topics such as robot learning and locomotion, controls and dynamics, and computer vision. Students are also expected to use work from an internship, research project and/or class project to develop an e-portfolio that is evaluated to demonstrate practical experience in robotics.

“These certificates create the spine for the master’s program,” said Oca. “And they’re already giving credence for the need and desire for these types of classes because they are both already very popular with students.”

The new Master of Engineering program combines offerings from both certificates along with classes taught by two new incoming faculty members.

Joanna Deaton will begin teaching lower-level mechatronics classes as well as advanced robotics systems classes that feature tendon-driven setups with a focus on medical robotics.

Xianyi Cheng will offer introductory courses in robotics as well as advanced courses on dexterous manipulation.

The resulting experience will train full-stack roboticists ready to translate their degree directly into the marketplace. Interested students might already have experience in one of the core competencies of coding, introductory robotics or computer vision, but most likely not all of them, or potentially any of them at all.

Even students who have had very limited exposure to robotics and automation in their undergraduate degrees will be able to thrive in this new Duke master’s program.

“I haven’t seen anyone else offering this specific set of coursework,” said Oca. “It’s very interdisciplinary because future roboticists need to understand different types of systems and how they come together.”

“Another aspect that makes our program stand out is that we want our students to think critically about what kind of impact their work will have by focusing on case studies coming directly out of industry through lots of guest speakers,” said Oca. “That required ethics course along with Duke’s existing strengths in medical systems and robotics gives students looking for something different a unique value proposition.”