Pixel International Conferences

The syllabus for the mechanical engineering studies at Furtwangen University offers the elective “Mechatronics in practice” for students in semesters 3 to 7. The course goal is to practically apply the previously obtained theoretical knowledge from courses like informatics, CAD and electronics to create a mechatronic system of medium complexity using low-cost hardware. The course is divided into two parts, where the first part consists of a 5-hour lecture introducing the students to Arduino programming with examples on how to control various hardware components and read signals from sensors. Each student group is given a set of motors and sensors that can be used in the introductory lecture and in the project task thereafter. In the second part of the course, the students are asked to define project milestones and allocate the various project tasks to solve the given assignment among the project members. The project progress and the meeting of the self-set milestones is then continuously evaluated by the course examiners during the course progression. The students are free to use the university 3D-printers and laser-cutters to build the necessary parts for their project. The various group solutions are presented to the other groups in a final event. Course assignments so far included a battle bot, a line-follower robot and a drawing robot. The course experience showed that the various student groups found very diverse solutions to the given tasks with a high quality of execution. The student feedback is collected using a questionnaire. The results of that survey showed a very high satisfaction with the course. Among the various reasons for that was the motivation the students gained through the practical and fun assignments, the possibility to test their solution against the solution of other groups (through e.g. a fight between battle bots or a timed lap for the line-follower robots) and the chance to apply their theoretical knowledge in a practical project. The survey also showed that students invested more time in that course than what is usually required in a course of that scope because they tried to solve the given task as best as possible.

Keywords: Mechatronics education, Robotics, Project-based education, Independent problem solving;