‘What would I love to do?’: A look at the University of Idaho students building the next generation of robots

Within a $5 million laboratory on the University of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene campus, a host of intelligent robots wait for their next command.

There’s a two-fingered robot named Larry clacking away at piano keys. There’s a sentient pin ball machine learning to play itself through trial and error. There’s four autonomous robotic arms, each capable of carrying up to 400 pounds. And along the outskirts of a massive metal cage made to contain the “dangerous” robots, a four-wheeled cart – designed to find and zap weeds with 3,500 volts of electricity – sits ready to hit its next bed of weeds.

In this case, these “dangerous” robots are ones incapable of detecting the presence of living things in their vicinity, not the bloodthirsty T-1000’s many recognize from the “Terminator” series.

While the vast majority of the automation inside the robotics laboratory for the UI Center for Intelligent Industrial Robotics are functional, there’s always a couple out of commission.

John Shovic, a professor and director of the Center for Intelligent Industrial Robotics, said he and his students broke about $7,000 worth of stuff last year. Shovic even created a wry award called the “Crown of Destruction” for the student who inflicts the most damage.

“These units aren’t used 24 hours a day like they are in a factory,” Shovic said. “So they don’t wear out. But students designing, and things like that, sometimes break something.”

Starting in the fall, students at the University of Idaho will have even more opportunities to wreak havoc on innocent robots when the university unveils three new degree programs meant to combine artificial intelligence, automation and robotics.

Steve Yang, the chair of the computer science department, said there are eight new, AI-specific courses available at the University of Idaho next school year, for a total of 14 AI courses. Students will be able to pursue their bachelor’s degree, Master of Science or Master of Engineering in artificial intelligence. All three are available at the Moscow and Coeur d’Alene campuses, with graduate programs offered online.

“The real world of AI isn’t just ChatGPT and what they call large language models,” Shovic said. “There’s a whole lot more to it than that.”

“Understand a robot isn’t just something that looks like a mechanical arm, it can be any kind of a machine that does something automatically.”

Shovic said businesses are racing to automate. His goal is to teach students how to build and use systems that incorporate robotics and artificial intelligence into “physical AI.”

“It’s really not reducing the labor force, it’s changing the labor force,” Shovic said. “People need to be more familiar with how to repair robots, for example, or how to operate robots, or how to program robots and program these machines, and then connecting them all together, which starts to get us into the AI stuff.”

Throughout history, whenever there’s been massive technological change, like what was seen during the industrial revolution, Shovic said there have always been people who resisted. He points to the Luddite movement of the 19th century as proof.

The Luddites – named after an imaginary, Robin Hood-esque character known as Ned Ludd – were skilled English weavers and textile workers who banded together to protest new machinery. They broke into factories in the middle of the night and destroyed mechanized looms and knitting frames. They were trained artisans who spent years honing their craft just as machinery hit the factories and opportunities for cheaper labor in the form of machine operators left many without jobs.

Today, the term “Luddite” varies . It can be someone irrationally resistant to all forms of technology or someone apprehensive of the effect technology has on everyday life.

After the industrial revolution , Shovic argued nearly everyone’s living standards improved. People were making more money working in factories than when they were working in their own home.

Yet, rampant exploitation and unregulated working conditions existed for years until new laws were implemented, proving technology often surpasses our means of controlling it.

The keys to making the transition period easier during this “fourth industrial revolution” is to be empathetic to those who are out of work, while simultaneously educating and retooling those same people to survive the colossal shift that’s underway. This change could and should be done in an orderly fashion through proper government regulation, Shovic said.

“We’ve got to pay attention to those people who are being displaced.” Shovic said. “We need to do retraining programs. … Yes, there’s going to be dislocations, but history says it’ll be all right in the end.”

Shovic has 110 undergraduate students enrolled in the robotics program, which he said is a combination of mechanical engineering, computer science and electrical engineering, split between his labs in Coeur d’Alene and Moscow.

When he first started eight years ago, he said he had one student.

Shovic said there will always be a need for humans who know how to build and repair robots. Companies will require more “21st -century automation engineers.” That means people who are more than just mechanical engineers, but also those who possess “a good deal of software background.”

Kevin Wing is one of those people.

Before becoming a doctoral student at the University of Idaho, Wing worked as a fast food manager on Spokane’s South Hill for the better part of a decade.

One day, as he drove home, he saw a flashing billboard on the side of the freeway encouraging passersby to get their bachelor’s in computer science at the University of Idaho.

“Sometimes you let life get in the way,” Wing said. “So you tell yourself over the years, ‘Oh, some day I’ll go back. Some day I’ll go back.’ Well, some day came.”

Wing, 44, is working on a wireless sensor network for precision agriculture known as Project Scarecro, which is a long acronym for the Sensor Collection and Remote Environment Care Reasoning Operation.

Minuscule sensors, often cemented in soil, track conditions like temperature, humidity, soil moisture, plant water uptake and more. That information is channeled into one place for farmers to view.

In fall 2020, Wing decided he wanted to go back to school to get a bachelor’s degree. Now, six years later, he’s working toward his doctorate with a goal to work in the automation industry after graduation.

Wing was a part of a unique program in which the University of Idaho partners with North Idaho College for a “two-plus-two degree program,” as Shovic said. Freshmen and sophomores at the community college take classes to gain early experience and mentorship in AI and robotics before transferring to the University of Idaho to continue their education.

For five years before enrolling at the University of Idaho, Ethan Carpenter worked in construction.

Today, the 26-year-old is a manager of a janitorial company full-time, a part-time intern at the University of Idaho, and a student at North Idaho College.

The father of two is working on designing a system to mount onto a miniature submarine to collect water samples from Lake Coeur d’Alene.

One of the most difficult parts of designing the underwater drone, known as Project Sunfish, is to ensure the 20 pounds of electronics and the buoyancy devices strapped to it don’t cause the drone to sink too far down or too far up. It needs to be “neutrally buoyant” and easily able to collect samples from different depths.

Once Carpenter graduates, he hopes to find a job in the aerospace industry.

“I didn’t really think about (school) until I had kids,” Carpenter said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t necessarily do what I’m doing now. What would I love to do?’ ”

At seven months pregnant, Lacey Bowden will soon welcome children of her own into the world.

She’s a master’s student at the University of Idaho who earned her bachelor’s in computer science in 2025. Last semester, she took a fellowship position with North Idaho College and taught an introductory robotics course to freshmen and sophomores.

“That was a brand new class,” she said. “I developed the curriculum for that class and taught it in the spring, and now I’m done teaching for now, but I’m working on my master’s research project.”

Bowden is working with a local manufacturing company called Altek in Liberty Lake. The company specializes in plastic injection molding for commercial airlines. Bowden said the company produces panels, often used in luggage compartments above passenger seats, with tiny slots for screws to go into. When screws are inserted, sometimes the plastic cracks and costs Altek a sizable chunk of change.

“We’re developing a new method to do it using heat, where you heat up the part and then melt it into place,” Bowden said. “So I’m going to be using a robot to automate that process.”

Next semester, when Bowden takes maternity leave, a mechanical engineering student is set to pick up where she left off. Before she gives birth, she aims to design a robot tool head to pick up tiny parts and a “software communication system” so a human operator can load a part in, and the robot, equipped with a camera, will know “exactly which type of inserts to use, how to mount them, where they’re supposed to go,” and then tell the operator when it’s done.

Other students, like doctoral student Hunter Hawkins, partnered with an American sugar beet-refining company to create an AI-powered preventive system that monitors the plant’s steam dryer and warns the company of any potential problems.

“We’re a very experiential learning program,” Shovic said. “When a graduate of engineering and computer science comes out of the University of Idaho, we actually know how to do things, not just understand the theory.”

Prior to graduating with her bachelor’s degree, Bowden, a Coeur d’Alene High School graduate, worked on Project Scarecro before Wing came onboard. While Bowden has moved on to a different project, Wing said he’s much happier with his life now compared to when he was a fast food manager, or when he worked at Office Max, or when he worked as a long-haul truck driver or even when he was a freelancing computer repair expert.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned, if you’ve got that thing that you want to do, just start,” Wing said. “The best time to start was 10 years ago. The second best time to start is right now.”