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Mobile Robotics: A tool for application-based integration of

multidisciplinary undergraduate concepts and research

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a mobile robotics course at the primarily undergraduate engineering school, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. This course is one of the final courses in the multidisciplinary educational robotics certificate program. The purpose of this course is to use the robot to provide the students with an appreciation of their discipline and how it applies to other disciplines. It is hypothesized that students will gain a more realistic model of their future workplace demographic while also learning about robotics theory and the open areas of robotics research.

Introduction

Undergraduate students in science and engineering frequently express a desire to relate the abstract theory presented in class to real-world or practical application. One method that can be used to integrate component theory with system or practical application is robotics. Since robotics theory includes topics such as sensors, controls, mechatronics, kinematics, microcontroller programming, embedded systems and software development; it is an ideal model for multidisciplinary application. Students from several disciplines including electrical and computer engineering, computer science and software engineering and mechanical engineering can work together in a robotics course to gain depth understanding of their major and breadth understanding of another major. It is hypothesized that this type of classroom experience is a more realistic simulation of their future workplace.

Robotics is typically used as an artifact to engage K-12 students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), recruit students to STEM, teach concepts such as programming, controls or embedded systems and also to teach freshman or senior design. Based upon mainstream media, movies, film and K-12 competitions; students gain interest in robotics but also at times an unrealistic perception of the state of the art. Typically, undergraduate robotics courses suffer from lack of a good textbook and either too basic or too complicated activities because of student pre-requisite knowledge and skill.

This paper will present the details of the development and offering of an upper level course (IMR) designed to teach multidisciplinary robot theory and application that also gives the students an appreciation for some of the open research issues and challenges. The Introduction to Mobile Robotics course is one of the last courses in the multi disciplinary robotics certificate program at the Rose-Hulman, so some students have prior experience with robotics (http://robotics.rose-hulman.edu). This course is innovative in the fact that it is available to students from multiple disciplines and attempts to motivate students for further study or research in robotics versus using the robot as a tool to motivate some other topic. This is compelling because these students are already interested in STEM fields and have or will take courses in design, software, programming, electronics, controls and kinematics. Since this

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Berry, C. (2010, June), Mobile Robotics: A Tool For Application Based Integration Of Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Concepts And Research Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--15642