University of Michigan Robotics Department

What’s an MBot? Just something to debug throughout ROB 550.

And ROB 102. And ROB 203. And ROB 330. And…

If you already miss your MBot, take a look back with Reina Mezher and Yulei Fu.

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On what actually sets the department apart: A close-knit community and students cheering each other on.

“There’s less gatekeeping,” says Yulei Fu, third-year Robotics undergrad.

As an architect of a few of the robotics courses, Professor Jessy Grizzle knows about gatekeeping, and has built curriculum to ameliorate the issue.

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Graduation means one thing around here: robot parade!

Congrats to all the graduates! Good luck, and go blue!

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“I was shocked the other day when I learned that there’s more than one definition of rigor.”

Professor Jessy Grizzle talks discusses the difference between rigor that builds understanding and rigor that just fails a third of the class.

He talks about how Michigan Robotics designed the curriculum around the belief that if you got admitted to , you’re capable.

Undergrad Yulei Fu adds what that looks like in practice: “We not only learn the theory, we execute it right after.”

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A staple of the Michigan robotics graduate student experience: ROB 550.

Each semester, this course gives students the basics of robotics: sensing, reasoning, and acting. And Mbots. And mazes. And RViz. And…

It culminates in the year-end competition, where teams go head to head for points on who can map, navigate, and occasionally stack tiny pallets.

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Robotics is broad by definition. So how do robotics undergrads go deep?

Professor Jessy Grizzle covers the concentrations Michigan Robotics is building into the degree: hardware and sensors, perception and reasoning, dynamics and control, human-robot interaction, and full-stack robotics.

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“Isn’t the robotics major just code with a little bit of hardware, or hardware with a little bit of code?” asks undergrad Yulei Fu. What separates it from CS, ME, EE, and other majors?

Professor Jessy Grizzle’s answer:
“Robotics is the full sandwich. It’s not a single slice. It’s not a single silo.”

Grizzle talks about what systems thinking actually means, and why siloed decisions build Frankenstein monsters instead of robots that work.

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A lot can happen in three milliseconds.

Especially if you’re on top of a soft robotics combustion actuator.

In this high-speed video, a tiny controlled explosion inflates the soft membrane of a microcombustion actuator, sending colorful, carefully arranged water droplets skyward.

A selection of the video frames was composed as a single piece exhibited at the 2026 art gallery in Kanazawa, Japan, where it won both the Audience Choice award in the Photography category and the Image of Distinction award.

Credit to Manvi Saxena, Yihao Geng, Jason Brown, Dan Newman and Cameron Aubin for the hours of setup behind this fraction of a second.

Read about the setup, link in bio.

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Amazon. JPL. Tesla. NASA. Ford. Stryker. Nuro.

Professor Jessy Grizzle talks about where Michigan Robotics undergraduates are landing, and why the best robotics job postings might not even say “robotics.”

“You have to read between the lines a little bit.”

Third-year undergrad Yulei Fu backs it up with a company she’s already worked with that wanted SLAM and path planning skills, exactly what she’s learning in class.

See more on careers and outcomes, link in bio.

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“This major is for builders, for people who like to tinker.”

That’s how third-year Yulei Fu describes ’s Robotics undergraduate major in a conversation with Professor Jessy Grizzle.

In this new series, they’ll be talking about robotics jobs and careers for majors, what makes robotics difference than mechanical engineering or computer science, how difficult robotics courses are, and what differentiates the robotics community from others at .

Can’t wait to see the whole convo? Check out our YouTube, link in bio.

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