Featuring Robotics In A Senior Design Capstone Course

For the past few years the Department of Engineering Technology have offered a senior design capstone course that helps Electronic Engineering Technology students develop interdisciplinary skills and knowledge to work on designs and products requiring the integration of mechanical, electrical, and microprocessor-control systems. Mechatronics is a term frequently used for this integration. The course features an autonomous mobile robot that the students must design, fabricate, test, and document. The course incorporates recent TAC/ABET (Technology Accreditation Commission of Accrediting Board of Engineering and Technology) guidelines concerning open-ended design problems. In this course and under these guidelines the students develop creativity, refine and use accepted design methods, formulate problem statements and specifications, consider alternative solutions and determine feasibility issues, and create detailed system descriptions. Students work individually or in teams of two or three on their projects. Lecturing is kept to a minimum and the class takes on a more or less studio-learning atmosphere, with the instructor acting as an advisor and making rounds to each project to check on progress in meeting developmental milestones and to offer guidance. Students are required to meet five check-point deadlines and the finished robot is to exhibit three behavioral objectives. This robotics project has become very popular with the students and has even attracted some students who are Computer Information Science majors to select the course as a technical elective. This senior design course featuring autonomous mobile robots, now in its fifth year, continues to be rated highly by students as an opportunity in which they experienced both teamwork and personal achievement in the hands-on application of the knowledge gained during the course of their bachelor’s degree program. Introduction The Engineering Technology Department at Cleveland State University offers two degree programs: a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET). These are 2 + 2 programs in which students must first complete the Associate of Applied Science Degree in Electronic or Mechanical Engineering Technology from a regionally accredited community college, technical institute, or university branch before transferring to CSU to complete the upper-division courses in years three and four of a bachelor’s degree program. Graduates from ET Department programs, as well as those from other CSU programs, generally find employment in the local community. All fourth-year students in their final term at CSU are required to take a senior capstone design course in order to be graduated. Two senior design courses are generally offered in each P ge 907.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering engineering technology program, in areas of interest of the assigned faculty. In the MET program, students choose between a capstone design course featuring machine design projects and one featuring thermal systems design. In the EET program, students choose between a capstone design course featuring PLC control of industrial processes and one featuring robotics. It is the latter robotics-oriented senior design capstone course that is the subject of this paper. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of the EET program seniors select this capstone course over the PLC-oriented course. In addition, a number of Computer Science (CS) majors have enrolled and successfully completed the course. The development of the capstone course was influenced mainly by two sources: the accreditation evaluation criteria of the Technology Accreditation Committee (TAC) of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) 1 and by the needs of the local industry. According to TAC/ABET requirements, the capstone design course should develop student competence to solve problems using technical and non-technical skills achieved throughout the curriculum. Industry is interested in graduates who can perform practical engineering design, integration, and syntheses. The course was subsequently structured to satisfy the ABET TAC criteria and industry needs in the following way. In their projects students are required to design, build, and program robot vehicles to perform basic tasks or behaviors, while keeping a weekly log of their progress and status. The course enables seniors to apply knowledge and skills from various classes they have completed; work independently and in small groups; accomplish assigned tasks; design, test, and troubleshoot problems; and meet deadlines. The choice of mobile robots for the design projects was made because robotics involves a multidisciplinary combination of knowledge in the fields of mechanics, electronics, control, computer science, and communications. A robotics project therefore provides the integrating experience, called for in the ABET evaluation criteria, that draws together the various elements of the electronics engineering technology curriculum, and it provides for a practical engineering design effort, much like those in industry. In addition, the design and building of a small-scale mobile robot can be exciting and invigorating to students, who can feel empowered when they elicit complex behaviors from the machine 2 . In what follows, this paper describes how through the use of robotics-oriented design projects the course provides for the desired outcomes described above. The presentation is organized into course aspects first semester, course aspects – second semester, and course evaluation. Course Aspects – First Semester The course was originally developed in 1998 as a single spring-semester course but was revised in the 2000-2001 academic year to a two-semester sequence: Senior Design A and Senior Design B. In the fall semester of their final year students take the lecture course Senior Design A, during which the planning and preparation of the robotics project take place. In the following spring semester students take the lecture-laboratory course Senior Design B, during which the robotics project is completed. P ge 907.2 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering The two-semester course sequence is organized to emphasize the engineering design process. Engineering design is the process of devising a system, component or process to meet desired needs. The fundamental elements (steps) of the design process are listed in Figure 1. Students have not managed enough projects, however, to know all the steps necessary to successfully carry out an engineering design of this size. The instructor therefore takes the task of setting up the design project definition, organizing the individual design teams, and establishing the reporting requirements. The Engineering Design Process • Identify the need or problem • Research the need or problem