Quartz: GRASP Lab Spin-Off Exyn Takes Flight Underground

Exyn Technologies, a spin-off of Penn Engineering’s GRASP lab, makes software that can turn your average-joe drone into a fully autonomous flying robot, sensing, exploring, and navigating its environment without the aid of a human pilot or GPS navigation. Quartz’s Erik Olsen covered Exyn’s drone system in a story and video, showing drones exploring old […]

Siqi Sun: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni

This is part of our series of articles written by Penn Engineering alums about their experiences at Penn and how it shaped their lives. This article is by Siqi Sun, who graduated with a master’s in Scientific Computing in 2017. He is currently working in Shanghai as a research engineer at Nuance Communications, a leader […]

ModLab’s ‘SMORES’ Modify Their Environment to Get the Job Done

Given the exact parameters of the task at hand, a robot can assemble a car door or pack a box faster and more efficiently than any human, but such purpose-built machines aren’t good for much else. With that in mind, the history of robotics research is marked by devising ways of giving machines more and […]

Matt Blaze is quoted in KTVZ’s “Wyden-Merkley bill would require paper ballots, audits”

Machine Learning Researchers Try to Improve Working Conditions for Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Workers

In the late 1700s, a Hungarian inventor built what appeared to be a chess-playing automaton, cloaked in Ottoman robes and a turban. The machine, known as the Mechanical Turk, impressed crowds and challenged opponents across Europe and the Americas. Eventually it was revealed that the Turk was not automated at all. Rather, a skilled chess […]

Norm Badler is featured in “Original Philadelphians” interview

Vimanyu Jain: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni

This is part of our series of articles, written by Penn Engineering alums in their own words, of their experiences at Penn and how it shaped their lives. Our next article is written by Vimanyu Jain, who graduated with a master’s in Computer Graphics and Game Technology (CGGT) in 2013. He is currently the senior […]

A Virtual World for an Ancient Society

Clark Erickson of the School of Arts and Sciences and the Penn Museum, describes his efforts to humanize the past, enlisting artists, field work, and digital visualization tools. In a course co-taught last fall with computer scientist Norman Badler ,Rachleff Family Professor in Computer and Information Science, Erickson helped students populate a virtual landscape with […]

Theresa Breiner: Voices of Penn Engineering Master’s Alumni

This is part of our series of articles, written by Penn Engineering alumni, about their experiences at Penn and how it shaped their lives. Our next article is written by Theresa Breiner, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from Penn Arts & Sciences and a master’s degree in Computer and Information Technology (MCIT) […]

GRASP’s Research Experience for Teachers Featured in NSF Video Showcase

Penn Engineering’s GRASP lab is committed to sharing its expertise in cutting-edge robotics with the wider world. In 2015, it received a National Science Foundation grant to conduct a Research Experience for Teachers program, in which Philadelphia middle school teachers spend a summer in the lab, learning aspects of robotics that they can then impart […]