Education

Dr. Zhao's Courses

Dr. Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University. Below are his current course offerings.

Course Description: Mechatronic and measurement system analysis and design; applied electronics; data acquisition; microcontroller interfacing and programming.

Course Description: Kinematics of robots; controls for robots.

Course Description: Modeling, analysis, and synthesis of practical mechanical devices in which dynamic response is a dominant consideration.

MECH 630: Biologically Inspired Robotics

Course Description: Discussion of various locomotion methods found in animals or insects, such as terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial locomotion. It also discusses a variety of robots that are inspired from biological studies. The course combines existing textbook materials on animal locomotion and state-of-art papers on robot locomotion to help students understand key concepts in biologically inspired robots.

Outreach

The lab is a science partner with the Little Shop Of Physics (LSOP) for its annual open house for K12 students in Northern Colorado every February. During the open house, we demonstrate various visually appealing activities (e.g., flying a quadcopter, playing with artificial muscles) that inspire the interest of K12 students for STEM. The following are a few pictures of recent events.

Haijie shows kids how to fly a quadcopter. 

Brandon demonstrates reconfigurable robots. 

Jordan explains how to build a walking robot.