by Dr. Ethan Danahy, Research Assistant Professor at the CEEO
The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) is closely involved in the running of two robotics classes within the School of Engineering at Tufts.
Dr. Ethan Danahy (Research Assistant Professor at the CEEO, with secondary appointment in the Computer Science department) teaches the first-year intro-to-engineering course “Simple Robotics” to about 30 of Tufts incoming freshman engineering students. This past semester, post-doc Dr. Aaron Johnson from the CEEO helped co-teach the course, bringing his expertise in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, and human factors to the class. Together, they worked to not only expose the 18-year-old budding engineers to the engineering design process and context ranging from mechanical and structural to electrical and programming, but also highlight some of the real-world engineering skills and practices the students would need later in life: creative thinking, problem solving, teamwork, communication, and presentation abilities.
The course is structured around weekly challenges posed to the students, such as “building a robotic animal,” “creating a robot to draw a square,” “sort candy based on characteristics,” etc. Some projects were more “showcase” in nature, and the CEEO continued a multi-year tradition of hosting a Haunted House around Halloween that featured interactive, robotic exhibits built by the students and visited by members of the local community.
A new project was introduced this year, inspired by Aaron’s background in aerospace engineering and interest in space travel. Using the context of EVA (extravehicular activity, or spacewalks), the students were challenged to build tools to help assist an astronaut in completing common tasks required during these spacewalks, such as moving nuts between bolts or routing wires. Emphasizing the human factors of their designs, the students donned bulky ski-gloves (to simulate the cumbersome space suits) and had to demonstrate their tools could operate left/right handed and at all angles (sideways and upside down) without dropping the materials, as a representation of the tools being versatile in the complex space environment.
The following is a video highlighting the conception, details, and implementation of the project within the first-year intro-to-engineering Simple Robotics class.
For junior/senior level students in the Mechanical Engineering department, the “Introduction to Robotics & Mechatronics” class builds on many of the introductory topics taught in the first-year course. Taught by Mechanical Engineering Professor Chris Rogers (also chair of the CEEO’s Steering Committee), this year doctoral student Whitney Crooks joined in assisting with the class. Starting with the LEGO MINDSTORMS robotics platform, the class quickly transitioned to other hardware tools, most notably the myRIO and roboRIO platforms from National Instruments. Also structured as a sequence of weekly challenges the students complete to reinforce the technical content, the highlight of the semester was the final project where the class collectively told stories from the Harry Potter series. A collaborative project, student groups each chose a particular experience from the wizard-themed story and created interactive robotic exhibits that allowed visitors to participate in life at Hogwarts.
For the final showcase at the end of the semester, the Dean of the School of Engineering, Dean Jianmin Qu, visited the class and traversed through the experience, being “sorted,” casting spells, solving puzzles, and surviving life as a wizard. His journey is detailed in the following video.
Want even more information on these robotics experiences? Back in 2013, the School of Engineering did a news piece highlighting the types of learning that happens in both these classes. You can read that article (and watch the related videos) here: http://now.tufts.edu/articles/engineering-toyland
