Using Robus In Electrical And Computer Engineering Education
François Michaud, Mario Lucas, Gérard Lachiver, André Clavet, Jean-Marie Dirand, N. Boutin, Philippe Mabilleau, Jacques Descoteaux · 2024
ROBUS (ROBot University of Sherbrooke) is an autonomous mobile robot designed to facilitate interdisciplinary engineering design in Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CE).Its primary purpose is to serve as an integrated platform for a project called INGÉNIUS that introduces electrical and computer engineering simultaneously to a large group of first-year undergraduate students registered in these two distinct programs.Divided in thirty-five teams of six or seven, these students are being initiated to various aspects of electrical and computer engineering such as electric circuits, electronics, sensors and actuators, logic circuits and CPLD, microprocessors, real-time C programming, robotics, technical drawing and communication.This way, ROBUS gives hands-on technical and teamwork experiences early in the curriculum.The robot is used in six different courses, and an interdisciplinary team of professors also work together to coordinate these activities.At the end of the second semester, teams participate in a robot competition where the objective is to design an entertainment robot for children with learning disorders.For fourth-year students in EE and CE, ROBUS is used in more advanced undergraduate courses such as Microprocessor Interfaces, Real-Time Systems, Robotics Projects and also in one graduate course on Artificial Intelligence.The projects done in these courses are oriented toward giving more advanced capabilities to ROBUS, help developed complete autonomous robots and to teach specific concepts.This paper gives a description of ROBUS and how it is used in these activities.