His
courses reach into corporations.
Hakan Gurocak toppled the biggest barrier to distance learning.
The manufacturing engineering professor devised a way to give
students at remote sites hands-on access to equipment for laboratory
courses. Imagine that you want to enroll in Professor Gurocak’s
automation course. The class meets in Vancouver. You, on the
other hand, work at the Boeing Company in Seattle. Professor
Gurocak bridges the distance by connecting robots and automation
equipment in his classroom to the Internet. Then, using the University’s
existing telecommunications system, which links remote classrooms
with real-time audio and video, he creates a statewide virtual
laboratory. With Professor Gurocak’s proprietary software
and touch-screen monitors, students in distant locations learn
to program and control robots in real time. Students at Boeing
use this innovation to take lab courses over the Internet. Remote
workers at industrial-automation leader Festo Corp. use similar
tools created by Dr. Gurocak to interact with one of the company’s
products.
