Robotics and Autonomous Systems Master's Program Online

Robotics and Autonomous Systems Program Overview

Offered fully online, the master’s in Robotics and Autonomous Systems is a new Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals program created to strengthen the workforce in this critically important engineering discipline. A university and research powerhouse, we’re longtime pioneers in the robotic innovations used today in health care, defense, transportation, and more. Now we’re building on that experience and knowledge to offer working professionals a program that prepares them to create the future of safe and reliable human and robotic interaction.

As a student, you will be immersed in a curriculum focused on developing your skills for analyzing, designing, building, programming, deploying, and evaluating robots and autonomous systems. Artificial and machine learning concepts are integrated into the program, ensuring that you will emerge with the ability to develop robotics and autonomous systems that:

• Safely interact with humans and other robots
• Perceive and understand their environment, plan to achieve goals, and execute multi-step tasks
• Employ multi-modal sensors to navigate and control their trajectories in diverse environments
• Collaborate with humans and other robots to accomplish goals
• Operate over a continuum ranging from human remote control to full autonomy

Master’s Degree Focus Areas

A focus area must be selected. While required to narrow your study, your focus area will not appear on your degree. 

• Dynamics, Navigation, Decision, and Control: A program of study that focuses on robotics and autonomous systems’ physical embodiment that enables them to move through their environment to perform tasks.
• Perception and Cognitive Systems: Designing advanced perception, reasoning systems, and cognitive systems to interpret the raw data of the sensory systems that generate immense quantities of images, video, depth-maps, optical flow, movements, etc.
• Autonomous Systems: Designing autonomous systems, kinetic and non-kinetic robotic systems, that can perceive themselves and their surroundings, interpret their perceptions, develop courses of action to accomplish goals, execute the goal, and check to determine if anything has changed.
• Human-robot and Robot-Robot Teaming: A focus on designing autonomous systems that find solutions to challenges such as acting in fair, ethical, and socially acceptable ways as they team with humans. Furthermore, creating systems that can meet the challenges that arise from complex ecosystems of intelligent systems—such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities, etc.—whose behaviors are emergent and unpredictable.
• General Robotics: Focuses on a broad range of knowledge in robotics and autonomous systems and the opportunity to design studies based on personal interests.

focus area requirements