Gripping Robotics Course Fuels Hands-On, Collaborative Learning

Pinchers and burgers were busy in the basement of Benedum Hall on December 8, 2025. So were the University of Pittsburgh mechanical engineering students who had built and programmed these robots. For their final project of MEMS 1200: Introduction to Robotic Systems, the students showed off their collaborative, creative problem-solving skills and their technical know-how as their robots collected pens and navigated a maze.  

Co-taught by  William (Buddy) Clark, Professor and Interim Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Breelyn Styler, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering and Robotics Scientist at PickNik, the course provides students with the opportunity to develop coding, wireless networking, and robotics skills vital to mechanical engineering. For some students, the course has illuminated new pathways to pursue after graduation.

“Given the wide interest of students in our department and the growing robotics industry here in Pittsburgh, we realized that we needed to give students an opportunity to get hands-on experience in this field,” said Clark, who developed and taught the course last year with Professor Mark Miller.

This fall, Clark collaborated with Styler, who has extensive expertise in software and robotics. The two expanded the breadth of the course to involve two types of robots—the playfully nicknamed pinchers and burgers (the former an articulated arm with a gripper, the latter a mobile circular unit).

The students, in pairs, built their burger robots from kits and set to work programming both the arm and the mover. In their lab space, they applied the concepts that they learned in lectures.

“My biggest takeaway was learning all the fundamentals and then actually implementing them—getting that hands-on experience working with inverse kinematics and motion planning, and learning more about the world of robots,” said Sam Kester, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student.

All semester, the teams worked toward their final project. They programmed the pinchers to retrieve a highlighter pen and place it in a storage bin connected to the burger. The burger would then maneuver through the maze and drop the pen at the other end. 

While all teams completed the same basic tasks, they did so differently, applying various navigation and sensing techniques. Students also developed different capabilities. Some pincher robots could sense the color of the pens, collecting only certain ones. One burger pushed the pen while others held it in a bin. Another even shot the pen out of its storage tube when it reached its destination.

“The students had freedom to show their creativity and grasp of robotics. With two robots, there are so many ways for them to demonstrate what they’ve learned,” said Styler. “And of course, since it’s robotics, there are many ways for it to go wrong.”

Indeed, during the final projects, as robots hit snags, students problem-solved in real time and soon had their creations on track. As one student, poring over the code on his laptop, said, “There’s so much to this.”

“A big part of this class has been error checking and perseverance. It's never going to work right the first time,” said Kester. “In the future, I hope to have a job where I can create and problem solve.”  

“To code for myself and work through these problems was a great experience,” added fellow fourth-year mechanical engineering student Angus Nicholson. “This course made me realize I’d like to move toward a design-based engineering career after graduation.”

See more pictures of the students and their robots in action.