Tom Gao

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About

Tom Gao is a leading figure in scalable robotics education, best known for developing the MBot platform—a low-cost, modular mobile robot ecosystem that has transformed how autonomous navigation is taught at the university level. Since 2014, the MBot has been used to train over 1,400 students at the University of Michigan and partner institutions, making hands-on robotics accessible at unprecedented scale. Gao’s flagship 2024 paper, “MBot: A Modular Ecosystem for Scalable Robotics Education,” has already garnered 6 citations and is shaping curriculum design worldwide. His major contribution lies in bridging the gap between theoretical robotics and practical, deployable teaching tools, enabling students to build, program, and test autonomous systems in real-world settings. By prioritizing affordability, modularity, and reproducibility, Gao has addressed a critical bottleneck in STEM education: the lack of accessible hardware for large-enrollment courses. His work is widely recognized for its impact on pedagogy, and he continues to refine the MBot platform to support evolving research in perception, control, and multi-robot coordination. For educators and researchers alike, Tom Gao’s innovations represent a blueprint for teaching robotics at scale.