Dr. Kay's Robotic Research at West Point

Crawling in the dirt and bushes is not what you’d expect from a typical robot research opportunity! Yet last summer, Dr. Kay had the incredible opportunity to research and work on robots at the United States Military Academy, West Point! 

With her Rowan career spanning over 25 years, Dr. Kay mainly teaches graduate and undergraduate AI and Robotic courses. Her educational background also showcases her love for robots and STEM, as she completed her undergrad at Carnegie Mellon where she double majored in Math and Computer Science! She worked on numerous robotic projects, mainly focusing on the NavLab projects. 

Yet, while she worked on humongous, space robots during her undergraduate studies, Dr. Kay stepped out of her comfort zone during her sabbatical working with military robots at West Point’s robotic research center. While the Rowan professor worked on numerous projects at the research center, Dr. Kay’s largest endeavor was to advance tiny ground robots for search and rescue. Their hope was to advance the robots to do a search and rescue at the same level as a team of humans. More specifically, this search and rescue tool is to improve situational awareness and planning tools, not a piece of software that the military uses. The group of robots is supervised by a human, and Dr. Kay and her team were challenged to help improve communication between the robots, especially  in locations with intermittent communication areas.

Although this was her biggest project, it wasn’t the only interesting project she worked on. At 4:30 AM, Dr. Kay and her team had to go to the range and get their hands dirty by testing and improving robot communications. Instead of using bluetooth, a drone has a tether that is connected to the robot, giving the robot more power. Within these simulations, the researchers had to crawl in the dirt and hide in the bushes – an activity largely outside of Dr. Kay’s comfort zone. Some other projects she worked on concerned improving medical treatment, drone simulations, and more.

Throughout her whole experience, Dr. Kay wants students to realize that robots are used in numerous ways, and that there are a billion different applications for robots that are powerful and helpful for people. 

Interested in learning more? Read more about the Robot Teaming Search & Rescue work here, and about West Point's Robotics Research Center here.

Written by Cassandra Marie Nicdao | Posted 05.08.26