Case Study: Virginia Tech achieves award-winning robotics breakthroughs and builds the first U.S. full-sized humanoid and a vehicle for the blind with SolidWorks

Bringing advanced robotic systems to life with SolidWorks soft ware

Virginia Tech’s Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) needed a more powerful CAD solution to support increasingly complex undergraduate and graduate robotics projects—ranging from the Blind Driver Challenge to the CHARLI humanoid and the RAPHaEL robotic hand. In 2008 Virginia Tech made SolidWorks (SolidWorks Education Edition, 60 licenses) available to student researchers to address that challenge.

Using SolidWorks software, RoMeLa teams leveraged 3D modeling, motion simulation, FEA and routing tools to shorten design time, reduce errors and cut prototyping needs. SolidWorks enabled a string of award-winning projects—RAPHaEL’s international and national design wins, the development of the world’s first vehicle that can be driven by the blind, and CHARLI, the first full‑sized, fully autonomous bipedal humanoid in the United States.

Virginia Tech

Kimberly Wenger

Senior Mechanical Engineering Major