From Handy Board To Vex: The Evolution Of A Junior Level Robotics Laboratory Course
Yanfei Liu · 2020
A new set of autonomous robotics experiments for a junior level course is described in this paper.These experiments are based on the VEX robotics kit with the MPLAB software both of which offer more flexibility for the students to apply their mechanical and software design knowledge to build an autonomous mobile robot.The students work in groups and each group has at least one mechanical engineering major and one electrical or computer engineering major.This type of grouping ensures that students are exposed to a multi-disciplinary working experience, which is one of the desired outcomes of this course.Preliminary assessment results about the level of satisfaction that the students have about various components of the course are also presented.* ECE/ME 280 and ECE/ME 281 were the robotics lecture course and laboratory course before they were upgraded to junior level courses.Another reason to have the course at the junior level is to allow them to complete courses in statistics, dynamics, and differential equations before taking the robotics course.