Revisiting The Autonomous Robot: Finding The Engineer Within The Student

Motivation and Goals In 1999, the ECE department at Auburn University implemented a major curriculum reorganization that created four self-contained laboratories, two at the sophomore level and two in the junior, to introduce students to laboratory procedures and design projects. The final laboratory, an autonomous robot, is intended to be an open-ended project that prepares students for a senior-level capstone design course. In the lab, students use the PIC12F675 microcontroller from Microchip Technology, Inc. to create an embedded systems solution. We found that although the robot laboratory was being completed successfully, our average students were not prepared for the independent thinking required in their capstone designs. To address this issue, we identified six new goals and methods for the robot laboratory.