As WPI’s 2023 B term comes to a close, my graduate robotics courses come to a close as well. For these past two terms, I have been lucky to take one of WPI’s graduate-level robotics courses, RBE501: Robot Dynamics. We learned a lot more than “just” dynamics in this course, from new ways to calculate forward kinematics, to some perhaps unintended practical experience on how to make metal parts.

This article was written for the September 5, 2023 edition of Tech News, WPI’s campus newspaper. If you’ve ever seen falconry videos online, you know how agile birds can be. Watching them fly at top speed through gaps between trees and through obstacles until they reach their goal is something truly remarkable. Currently, there is a lab on campus dedicated to pushing the limits of autonomous control by attempting to fly a drone with the same speed and agility as these naturally engineered creatures (proving that birds are real, at least for now).

This article was written for the September 5, 2023 edition of Tech News, WPI’s campus newspaper. Anybody on campus this year will recognize the big green fences surrounding one of WPI’s oldest buildings, Stratton Hall. Originally built in 1894, this building is being modernized, with the construction effort completely upgrading the lighting, HVAC, windows and roofs, with the possibility of adding solar panels as well. Most importantly to students, TAs and professors alike, they’re finally adding an elevator to the building, which will make getting to that Calculus 3 discussion on the top floor so much easier.

This article was written for the September 13, 2022 issue of Tech News, WPI’s campus newspaper. On August 31 of this year, WPI grad student Heather Leclerc et al. published a paper detailing an improved way to produce biofuel. Biofuel is made by taking some kind of biomass, typically algae or food waste, extracting the oil content, and separating it into different grades of fuel. There are several ways to do this, including chemical reactions and fermentation, but the particular method Leclerc et al.