Engaging a variety of students in digital design with competition

This paper highlights the successes of contestants enrolled in an Introduction to Engineering class that took on the task of designing and building a robot to solve a problem with little or no background in electronics or programming. The semester long project started with developing a problem statement and from there timeline followed the Digilent Design Contest. Students had deadlines and formats for design documentation required by Digilent for the contest. While some students were attracted to the challenge of creating and implementing a design of their very own, other students are excited to compare their design against projects from students at other institutions. These competitions are designed to feed the excitement of the students and also fuel creativity.