The role of robotics in freshmen engineering curricula

Author

Roth, Zvi S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton, FL, USA

Volume

14

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

389

Lastpage

394

Abstract

The paper is based on the author´s experience gained from developing and teaching an interdisciplinary hands-on freshmen-level Introduction to Engineering course at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Robotics experiments, projects, lectures and computer lab activities currently occupy 15-25% of the course´s total curriculum. These include programming of industrial robots, construction of LEGO^® Mindstorms™ mobile robots and image processing. The paper describes all these activities and their educational objectives. It contrasts the objectives of the robotics activities with the overall course objectives. The paper identifies the sources of these robotics activities, relating these to more advanced activities pursued in several senior-level courses at FAU.

Keywords

control engineering education; robot programming; robot vision; robots; FAU; Florida Atlantic University; LEGO Mindstorms mobile robot construction; computer lab activities; freshman engineering curricula; image processing; industrial robot programming; robotics; Education; Educational institutions; Image processing; Job shop scheduling; Mobile robots; Processor scheduling; Programming profession; Robot programming; Service robots; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Automation Congress, 2002 Proceedings of the 5th Biannual World

Print_ISBN

1-889335-18-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WAC.2002.1049470

Filename

1049470