A competition-motivated, interdisciplinary design experience

This paper describes a six-year effort to provide students with an interdisciplinary, design-oriented, engineering experience through the implementation of a mobile robotics course and integral mobile robot contest. Open to all students that have completed engineering physics, the mobile robotics course requires teamwork, project management, and a mixture of theoretical understanding and laboratory skills. Student outcomes are both evaluated and publicly demonstrated through participation in an annual robot contest. Early access to this course, coupled with the option (and common practice) of repeating the activity, simultaneously provides beginning students with an introduction to the engineering discipline and more advanced students with a significant design experience. Mobile robots are designed and constructed to compete in events ranging from maze navigation to sumo wrestling. Students develop skills in both mechanical and electrical fabrication while designing mechanisms, circuits, and computer programs to support autonomous, situated operation. Design considerations, innovative features, and programming strategies are described in final reports that are shared with succeeding classes. The instructional challenge is to move from traditional information presentation to the provision and maintenance of a dynamic, cooperative and collaborative, active-learning environment.