Teaching Engineering Design Concepts through a Multidisciplinary Control Project

This paper described the design and the implementation of a multidisciplinary project in twosequential control courses to reinforce students’ understanding of engineering design concepts from a system point of view. Such a project had two phases which corresponded to the two courses. In the Phase I of the project, a vague problem idea was given, which required the students to design a (multidisciplinary) mechatronics system. The students formed in teams and collected information to further define the project before drawing their first drafts. Multiple ideas were generated during brainstorming in a team. The final design was a collaborative work contributed by every member in a team. Based on analysis and evaluation, an optimal design including a budget and a timeline was selected by the team members, but it was required to obtain the instructor’s approval before the implementation. All teams kept modifying the designs throughout the project as they understood the problem better. Each team was required to have all the necessary parts ready at the end of the Phase I of the project. The system was assembled and tested in the Phase II of the project. To fulfill the pre-defined project goals, each team designed and implemented a digital compensator in NI LabVIEW. At the end of the project, each team gave a presentation on the design along with a demonstration to the class. For the purpose of assessments, the progress reports in Phase I and the final reports in Phase II were used as the students’ feedback. A survey was conducted during and after the project. The survey results were compared and the changes of the students’ conceptions of engineering designs were discussed.