Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering-Lipscomb University

04/30/2026

The lippyRobotics undergraduate research lab participated in Stewarts Creek High School's battlebot competition "Kilobots" https://www.kilobots.stemwise.net/event-info. Associate Professor Juan Rojas served as one of the judges at the competition.

It was an action-packed competition where middle and high school students 3D-printed their battle bots. It was an honor and an amazing opportunity.

On our end, we got the students to directly control the robot, create demos, observe how the robot learned on its own, and ask questions!

It was an inspiring time.

04/30/2026

The lippyRobotics undergraduate lab (https://lipscomb-robotics.notion.site/), recently took their FR3 robot to an AI competition hosted at Vanderbilt University: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/valiant/programs-events/discoverai-2026/

The embodied AI the team presented, by running response deep reinforcement learning on manipulation tasks, caught a lot of attention at the event. For many people, it was the first time they had seen a robot learn live and respond to disturbances (see the video below)

We are very proud of their participation!
For more pictures, look at our photo album: https://bit.ly/4f2yO0C

04/30/2026

Associate Professor Juan Rojas (www.Juanrojas.net) was awarded a $15,000 grant by Open Research Community Accelerator (Open Scholarship Catalytic Awards Program).

This project is working to lower barriers to entry regarding the research and science necessary for undergraduate students and underserved populations to quickly get up to speed with the theory and skills in artificial intelligence, robotics, and systems.

Members of the lippyRobotics undergraduate research lab created and continue to update their www.lipscomb-robotics.notion.site portal to this end.

The group is also hosting workshops and round-table discussions to further bring community members as well, Follow the notion site for more details.

Finally, enjoy the following YouTube video as the team discusses their achievements.
https://youtu.be/mmtwe8K3oHQ?si=mIYflfLJ-t2RczPi

1 like. "ORCA Final Report: Minutes-to-Mastery: Accelerating Robotic Manipulation with Efficient Group DRL"

04/30/2026

As part of the "EECE 4483 Fundamentals of Machine Learning" class, students learned to deploy DRL algorithms directly on a 7-degree-of-freedom robot manipulator.

The algorithms must operate in high-dimensional continuous spaces and produce safe, coherent manipulation trajectories.

Students work in Linux, learn about Mujoco simulations, use Gym to interface with the system, and leverage algorithms like DDPG/SAC to train. Results are visualized in TensorBoard or in Weights & Biases.

The video below depicts a policy that students programmed and learned on their own through
reward signals.

04/30/2026

It's been an exciting semester in our "EECE 4483 Fundamentals of Machine Learning" class. Associate Professor Juan Rojas (www.JuanRojas.net) teaches machine learning (supervised and unsupervised), neural networks, Markov Decision Processes, Reinforcement Learning, and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL).

The final project then explores the intersection of Deep Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning. Students studied the underlying mathematics of how these algorithms work and then deployed them.

The videos below show student assignments in which agents learned policies using DRL algorithms like Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Soft Actor-Critic.

For the bipedal runner, notice how an agent may develop different policies as it learns to walk and move forward.

04/23/2026

The Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering wants to extend congratulations to our Seniors this year! During our professional development session this past week, our seniors participated in the Order of the Engineer Ceremony where they received a certificate and a ring to commemorate their time at our college. Let’s pray for them as they head out to have wonderful careers as Engineers!

04/17/2026

This week, teams from the 2025-2026 Engineering Senior Design Capstone course presented their research during the 2026 Student Scholars Symposium. Great job to our Seniors!

04/17/2026

Members of the 2025-2026 Senior Design teams presented their projects during the Nashville Post of the Society of American Military Engineers' (SAME) April meeting. Thank you to the SAME post for the invitation, and thank you to Aylor-Ibarra, Buckland, and Gutierrez for taking time out of the busy end of the semester to present their projects.

04/16/2026

The 2026 ASCE Nashville Branch Awards Night included the awarding of a Branch scholarship to Lipscomb Civil Engineering student, Xavier Guerrero. Xavier is the ASCE Student Chapter Vice President at Lipscomb and a member of the Concrete Canoe Team. Congratulations Xavier!

04/06/2026

We are proud to have Lipscomb Engineering represented!

As the world watches NASA’s Artemis II mission carry astronauts around the Moon for the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years, Lipscomb University alumnus Hayden Sears is following the journey with a unique perspective. The 2017 mechanical engineering graduate spent part of his career in ...