Robotics in Coeur d’Alene

The Industrial Robotics and Automation program in Coeur d’Alene is growing. The Center for Intelligent Industrial Robotics (CIIR) is building a pipeline of excellent students and research to train Computer Scientists and Mechanical Engineers in modern manufacturing techniques using new software paradigms and with the use of Artificial Intelligence programming techniques for machine vision, manufacturing data analysis and sensor data analysis. Our program is designed to be very much a complement to a mechanical engineering based program, with our emphasis on not building robots, but rather programming robots and building software systems designed for tough manufacturing and vision problems. We have a variety of robotics and PLC platforms from asset of 9 Cobots (Collaborative Robots) and full size manufacturing robots. We have a heavy emphasis on the use of embedded systems in robotics.

We design our robotics software primarily in Python using the ROS2 (Robot Operating System2) robotics framework. This is a multi-vendor compatible package that allows the coordination of numerous sources of data feeding into the robot control software such as cameras, distance, vibration and many other sensors. Then we apply machine learning programs (where appropriate) to accomplish things like task planning, motion execution and the all important inclusion of feedback into the process.

While our high-level programming is done using Python, we use a significant amount of class time learning about the standard robotics programming paradigm, PLC programming. We are using actual PLC controllers with a complex model factory and also with an innovative manufacturing line simulator called Factory I/O. Our student projects often involve using a PLC in conjunction with a 6 axis robot.

We have undergraduate and graduate Robotic certificates, consisting of a mix of robotics, PLC courses, Machine Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Mechanical Engineering and Data Science Courses.

Our CIIR Laboratory is located in the Hedlund Building on the North Idaho College campus. The CIIR lab is home to a number of robots ranging from the huge robot pictured above to smaller robots that are safe for people to work closely with. Upstairs in the same building, the U of I Coeur d’Alene Computer Science space is home to a full PLC laboratory, great undergraduate research programs, and even more robots. We also use Raspberry Pi and Arduino systems to build sensors and actuators as part of the class projects.

Thanks to the generosity of Boeing, Idaho Forest Group, JST, SEL and the Jacklin family we have a full set of robotics and PLC laboratories both in Coeur d’Alene and Moscow.

We currently have a strong undergraduate enrollment in robotics and are hosting both masters and doctoral students in our program.

The North Idaho College / UI Partnership in Coeur d’Alene

The University of Idaho and North Idaho College have an excellent working relationship. Thanks to our joint 2+2 program in Computer Science and Robotics, NIC students can take the first 2 years of their program at NIC and then the second 2 years of their BSCS program at the University of Idaho Computer Science department co-located on the NIC campus in the Hedlund building. You can now get your BS, masters degree and even your PhD degree right here in Coeur d’Alene on the NIC campus. As of 2024, we have 12 graduate students doing just that as well as 30 undergraduate computer science students working on their BSCS degree.

The NIC / UI relationship goes even deeper than that. The University of Idaho is well known for our robust undergraduate research program. We have now extended this undergraduate program to the NIC campus in the UI CS department. In 2024 we have 11 undergraduate students (7 of which are from NIC) doing research in our program on topics from machine vision to understanding the impact of climate on valley fever. Lots of AI (Artificial Intelligence) projects as well as projects in robotics and automation.