Robotics Engineering Program and Curriculum Development Rachid Manseur Electrical & Computer Engineering Dept. State University of New York at Oswego Oswego, NY 13126
[email protected]
Abstract—: Robotics, as a multi-disciplinary branch of science and technology, is concerned with a variety of computer-controlled electro-mechanical structures designed for a multitude of applications. Less than a decade ago, robotics was a graduate-level field of research in engineering & computer science offered only at a few large engineering institutions. It has now become an engineering discipline of its own with a small but increasing number of schools offering an undergraduate engineering degree in robotics engineering. This article provides an overview of new undergraduate curricula in robotics engineering and the challenges associated with its curriculum development. Keywords—robotics engineering; curriculum development;
I.
INTRODUCTION
Robotics is an area with an already enormous economic impact that has produced, and will continue to produce several new products and markets. These markets require an engineering workforce educated and skilled for effective contributions in robotics. Robotics has evolved from several different engineering disciplines and sciences. It requires a systems integration approach of concepts from Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Software Engineering, and Computer Science. As a degree program, support courses from cognate areas such as Mathematics and Physics need to be selected to provide effective preparation for robotics studies. This research explores and discusses the challenges and choices associated with the development of a Robotics Engineering undergraduate curriculum. A comparative study and analysis of recently offered curricula provides a starting point. The already large diversity within robotics and its numerous applications lead to many challenges in the development of a robotics degree program. The integration of a new robotics degree program within the academic infrastructure of a relatively small university and the resource impact will also be presented.
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One of the challenges addressed in this research is the multidisciplinary nature of robotics which imposes certain pre-existing conditions to a successful undergraduate program development. Several points will be considered including support disciplines and faculty availability, preparatory courses in supporting departments and the impact that a new robotics program will have on those departments. This work will also address the selection of robotics areas and applications to include or to exclude. Robotics covers several topics and addresses engineering concepts that apply differently to different types of robots. While robot manipulators used in manufacturing still represent the largest robot population in the world today, an ever increasing number of applications requires different kinds of robots including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), several types of biomimetic robots including humanoid robots as well as micro-robots used in the study of swarms and their applications, and nano-robots, expected to have several applications including a few within the health care industry, to name only a few. The automotive industry is currently engaged in the last development stages for the upcoming commercialization of driverless automobiles, creating an urgent need for increased expertise in automatic and autonomous mechanisms and processes. The market demand for robotics engineers is expected to experience a 13% growth by 2018 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. II.
CURRENT ROBOTICS PROGRAMS
Robotics has been a graduate-level field of study approachable from Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Electrical, Mechanical, or Industrial Engineering in several large engineering universities [1] since the late 1960s but it was not until 2006 that the first undergraduate robotics engineering degree program was introduced at Worchester Polytechnic Institute [2]. There are now over four others in the United States. Since 2011, BS degrees in Robotics Engineering can be obtained at the University of California at Santa Cruz [3] or at Lawrence Technological University [4] in
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Southfield Michigan as well. The University of Detroit Mercy started its RE program in 2012 [5] and the most recent is the BS degree program in RE recently announced to open at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in fall 2014 [6]. Carnegie Mellon University, home to the Robotics Institute, offers RE but only as a second major [7]. This is only the beginning as Robotics Engineering programs start to become as common as other engineering programs across the nation and the world. This research will prove informative to any engineering educators already engaged in, planning, or thinking about, the development of new engineering programs and a robotics program in particular. III.
ROBOTICS ENGINEERING
Robots are computer controlled machines capable of reprogrammable motions. Robotics stems from the combinations of several scientific and engineering disciplines. Figure 1 illustrates the multidisciplinary nature of robotics and list a few of its application domains. While it can be argued that the concept of a robot is centuries old, the first robots, programmable manipulator arms, capable of industrial employment, were manufactured by Unimation in the late 1950s [8]. Since then, robotics has evolved to comprise an ever expanding number of different types of programmable machines applied in an even larger number of fields.
Recognition of Science and Technology) [9], and BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology) [10] introduced robotics competitions in K-12 education, as a means to spur interest and attract students to science and technology. Today, several robotics competitions take place annually all over the world at all levels of education from middle school to graduate engineering [11]. Organizations like the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI) [12] have been working to advance robotics technology through several annual academic competitions on autonomous flying, underwater, and ground vehicle competitions designed to advance the state of the art in vehicular robotics. At an industrial level, competitions with million-dollar awards are also organized by the US government through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The DARPA challenges [13] have had a significant and direct impact on the fast development of autonomous vehicle technology with competitions that took place in 2004 and 2005 on a rural setting, followed in 2007 by a competition in an urban setting. The current challenge, started in 2012, is about the development of humanoid robots capable of autonomous rescue operations in unstructured environments. Robotics is already making a remarkable impact in medical care through the development of advanced prosthesis devices as well as robot-assisted surgery. It has also began to influence what is seen as the greatest potential market for robots: the household market. The Roomba robot, a self-charging autonomous vacuum cleaner, has been successfully commercialized by iRobot [14] in 2002. Autonomous lawnmowers are also commercially available [15]. Many robots designed for providing companionship and entertainment or assisting humans in a variety of tasks are in use today and under development. These advances indicate that the 21st century may well become known as the robotics century. The fast evolution and progress experienced by robotics, as discussed above, indicates that it has now reached a level of maturity sufficient to become an engineering discipline in its own right. All evidence indicates that the demand for robotics engineering graduates is poised to increase dramatically, justifying the development of new undergraduate programs in this expending field. IV.
Fig. 1. Robotics and Related Fields
For a few decades, from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, robots have been used mostly in manufacturing, where they revolutionized industrial automation, and in several university laboratories and centers where new types of robots, designs, and control methods have been continuously developed. Robotics became widely popularized when low cost microprocessor-based control boards and simple small 2-to-3 motor mobile robots were used a platforms for several engineering hardware competitions across the nation and the world. In the early 1990s, the FIRST (For Inspiration and
ROBOTICS CURRICULA
As shown in Figure 1, a robotics engineering curriculum should be designed to provide a well-grounded education with sufficient expertise for meaningful analysis and design skills in robotics systems. Figure 2 shows the traditional four components of a general curriculum. The general education requirements are typically institution-wide but may provide some choices of courses that have closer relevance to engineering than others even in the humanities and social sciences. Students may be advised to take those courses. The other three components are subject to design and constitute the main source of knowledge directly related to the discipline. In all of the four existing undergraduate robotics engineering programs reviewed in this work, the development relied on existing departments.
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Mechanical Engineering. It is based on the WPI-RE curriculum model and uses a similar sequence of four “Unified Robotics” courses to provide fundamental robotics content. C. The RE program at the University of California at Santa Cruz The curriculum chart listing the requirements for the BS degree in RE at UC Santa Cruz [19], indicates a robotics component composed of the following courses:
Fig. 2. Components of a curriculum
Faculty, able to teach most of the courses, are already present within existing departments in the institution. The development of a new RE program is therefore cost effective and greatly facilitated if some of the departments mentioned in Figure 1 are already present. In the next sections, a brief review of RE degree programs is provided in terms of the robotics component of the curriculum. The robotics courses are supported and augmented by required courses that directly support robotics, as well as electives in robotics and related areas including: • Mathematics – Differential & Integral Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Probabilities • Electrical Engineering – Circuits, Electronics, Digital Logic, and Embedded Systems, and Control Systems • Physics/Mechanical Engineering – Statics, Kinematics, Dynamics, and Mechanisms. • Computer ScienceNetworking.
Programming,
Data
Structures,
A. The RE program at the Worchester Polytechnic Institute With the first RE undergraduate degree offered in the US, WPI has pioneered the trend and provided a model of implementation of such a program. The development of the Worchester Polytechnic Institute RE program was driven by faculty within the Compute Science department with support and assistance by faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), and Computer Science (CS) Departments [16]. The core robotics component is composed of an introduction to robotics course (RBE1001) followed by a “Unified Robotics” sequence of four courses numbered RBE 2001 & 2002 and RBE 3001 & 3002. A description of each of these courses is available through the WPI undergraduate catalog [17]. Other robotics courses listed are: • RME/ME 4322 - Modeling and Analysis of Mechatronic Systems; • RME/ME 4815 – Industrial Robotics; B. The RE program at Lawrence Technologicak University. The RE program at Lawrence Technological University (136 semester credits) [18] is housed within the department of
•
CMPE 118/L – Introduction to Mechatronics
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CE 141 – Feedback Control Systems
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CMPE 167/L – Sensors
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Advanced Robotics Elective – one of: o
CMPE 215 – Models of Robotic Manipulation
o
CMPE240 – Linear Dynamical Systems
o
CMPE 242 – Applied Feedback Control
o
CMPE 264 – Image Analysis and Computer Vision
The UCSC degree program is offered by the Computer Engineering Department since Fall 2011. D. The RE program at the University of Detroit Mercy The degree program offered at UDM is a BS degree in Robotics and Mechatronics Systems Engineering that started in Fall 2012. Its 4-year curriculum chart is given in [20]. In opposition to the curricula discussed above, it does not include a series of courses specific to robotics/mechatronics but rather several courses of direct relevance to robotics from supporting departments. The degree program requires 143 credits that include 8 coop credits. It is administered jointly by the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering departments. E. The RE program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn With a start in Fall 2014, The 125 credits BS in RE degree program offered at the University of Michigan-Dearborn is the most recent RE program. It joins two other BS degrees offered by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in EE and CE. The robotics core is listed in [21] as: • ECE 347 (4) Applied Dynamics • ECE 3641 (4) Robots I w. Lab • ECE 373 (4) Microprocessors and Embedded Systems • IMSE 381 (4) Industrial Robots • ECE 460 (4) Automatic Control Systems /ME 472 System Analysis & Design • ECE 4641 (4) Robots II w. Lab • ME 472 (4) Prin & Appl of Mechatronic Sys • ECE 4881 (3) Introduction to Robot Vision • ECE 4951 (3) System Design w/ Microcontrollers • ECE 4987 (2) RE Capstone Design I
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•
ECE 4988 (2) RE Capstone Design II
Most of the courses above are part of the already existing curricula in ECE and ME with five courses addressing robotics specifically, namely ECE 3641, ECE 4641, IMSE 381, ME 472, and ECE 4881. The 4-credit total capstone courses are required to be in Robotics. V.
ROBOTICS ENGINEERING TOPICS & COURSEWORK
The multidisciplinary nature of robotics is illustrated in Figure 1 as well as within the five RE programs discussed in the previous section. The home departments of each one is different: Computer Science at WPI, Mechanical Engineering at Lawrence Tech., Computer Engineering at UCSC, Electrical Engineering & Mechanical Engineering jointly at UD-Mercy, and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the UM-Dearborn. This is evidence that a successful RE curriculum relies on courses from several sciences, mathematics, and engineering. These departments, when present, offer a platform that renders the development of a program in Robotics Engineering extremely cost-effective since most of the faculty, facilities, and equipment needed is already present. A. Robotics Areas – Types of Robots Within its young existence as a field of study, robotics has already evolved from the early robot manipulators of the 1960s to include an ever expanding variety of robots including: • Robotic arms • Humanoid robots • Autonomous & unmanned aerial vehicles • Autonomous water & underwater vehicles • Autonomous ground vehicles • Micro- and nano-robots • Bio-mimetic robots Each of these categories provides designs based on different modes of locomotion/movement, different types of motors, sensors, control systems, programming interfaces, and different hardware/software and artificial intelligence capabilities. As with any system, much of the design of a given robot depends on its application as different types of robots are often better suited for different applications. Figure 3 shows two kinds of educational and research robot mechanisms: three humanoid NAO robots [22] observing a small VEX-Clawbot mobile robot [23]. B. Robotics Topics The multidisciplinary nature of robotics stems from the fact that a large number of topics, from different scientific and technological disciplines, relate directly to one or more aspect of robotics. The following is a non-exhaustive list of important topics in undergraduate robotics:
Fig. 3 Nao Humanoid robots with a VEX clawbot
Mathematics – Differential and integral calculus, Trigonometric & transcendental equations Multivariable calculus Planar & space geometry, Linear Algebra Numerical Analysis Physics/Mechanical Engineering Statics Dynamics Kinematics Linkages and mechanisms Control of mechanisms Electrical/Computer Engineering Circuits and Electronics Signal and systems Digital design Embedded systems Analog & digital control systems Computer Science/Software Engineering Programming Hardware/software co-design Behavior programming Machine cognition Artificial intelligence Networking Computer vision & image processing Human/Robot interfacing Virtual/Simulation environments Robotics Sensors, actuators, and interfacing circuits Kinematics & dynamics of robotic systems Trajectory generation and obstacle avoidance Analysis and design of robotic systems Multi-actuator control systems Robot behavior and cooperation In a field that has already become so vast, it is not possible to concentrate on any particular type of robots.
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VI.
ROBOTICS PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
The development and introduction of a Robotics engineering BS degree program, with its reliance on other already established engineering programs, can be very costeffective. The State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego) provides an example institution where the introduction of an RE degree is possible at low additional investment. The school has only recently started to offer engineering. In 2010, a program in Software Engineering was added to its computer science department and in fall 2013, a new department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was created [24]. The new ECE degree program is designed to serve a student population of about 100 students with five faculty members. ECE started as a department at the same time as the university’s new $118M Shineman Science and Engineering Complex where it is housed. As a small department with limited areas of faculty expertise, a few areas of concentration are offered that include Robotics, Embedded Systems, Wireless Systems, and Biomedical Instrumentation. In addition to its modern studio style teaching rooms and project labs, the facilities include a large well-equipped robotics laboratory. This setup provides a favorable setting for the development of a new degree program in robotics engineering. The ECE and Computer Science departments with the software engineering program offer a sufficient platform for such a new program. New resources would be limited to the hiring of no more than two faculty members with expertise in mechanical engineering and robotics. While each institution is under unique circumstances regarding its ability to develop a new robotics engineering program, this article has discussed the feasibility and low investment requirements of such a program. The analysis of recent program development illustrates the flexibility of such a curriculum in terms of course composition. In view of the predicted demand for skilled technical workforce in RE, and the current interest in robotics generated by the FIRST [9], BEST [10], and VEX robotics competition [25] at the middle and high school levels, it is possible to predict that the number of new undergraduate RE programs will continue to increase in the near future. REFERENCES [1]
[2] [3]
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[4]
Lawrence Tecnological University, “Bachlor of Science in Robotics Engineeeing,” Internet document. http://www.ltu.edu/engineering/ mechanical/bachelor-science-robotics-engineering.asp. [5] The University of Detroit Mercy, “Robotics-Mechatronic Systems Engineering.” Internet document: http://www.udmercy.edu/catalog/ undergraduate2012-2013/programs/eng-sci/robotics-mechatronicsengineering/index.htm . [6] University of Michigan-Dearborn, “ B.S.E. in Robotics Engineering.“ Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Internet document: http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/ECE/udergrad_prog/index.php. [7] Carnegie Mellon University. “Robotics Additional Major.” Internet document: http://coursecatalog.web.cmu.edu/schoolofcomputerscience/ #roboticsadditionalmajor. [8] Wikipedia, “Industrial Robot.”, internet document: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_robot. [9] The FIRST Robotics Competition –Overview. Internet document: http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/FRC_Co mmunications_Resource_Center/Flyers/FRC_OverviewFNL.pdf. [10] BEST, “What is BEST?” Internet document: http://www.bestinc.org/ b_about_best.php. [11] Robots.net, “Robotics Competitions ; Robot Contests and Competitons.” Internet document : http://robots.net/rcfaq.html. [12] AUVSI Foundation-Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. “Competitons.” Internet document: http://www.auvsifoundation.org/foundation/competitions/. [13] Wikipedia. “DARPA Grand Challenge.” Internet document: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge. [14] iRobot. .” Robots that Make a Difference. .” Internet Document: http://www.irobot.com/us. [15] Calin, D. G.,”Top 5 Most Advanced Robotics Lawn Mowers.” IntoRobotics, July 30, 2013. Internet document: http://www.intorobotics.com/top-5-most-advanced-robotics-lawnmowers/#JTsMQz29rWEEk4XF.99 [16] Padir, T., Gennert, M.A., Fischer, G., Michalson, W.R., Cobb, E.C., “Implementation of an Undergraduate Robotics Engineering Curriculum”, Computers in Education Journal special issue on Robotics Education, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 92–101, July–September 2010.. [17] The WPI Undergraduate Catalog-2013-2014 – Course Descriptions – p. 172. https://www.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/Pubs-Catalogs-Ugrad/ug-201314-coursedescriptions.pdf [18] The Robotics Engineeeing Program at Lawrence Technological Univ. http://www.ltu.edu/engineering/mechanical/bachelor-science-roboticsengineering.asp#tab3. [19] University of California at Santa Cruz, “Robotics Engineering BS degree Curriculum Chart 2013-2014.” Internet document. http://ua.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/RE_13-14_0.pdf. [20] University of Detroit Mercy. “Robotics/Mechatronics Systems Engineering.” Internet document: http://eng-sci.udmercy.edu/programs/ eng/robotics-mechatronic/index.htm. [21] University of Michigan-Dearborn. “B.S.E in Robotics Engineering.” Fall 2014 catalog Year. Internet document. http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/SRA/pdf/curriculum/Curr_Robot_Fall _2014.pdf. [22] Gouaillier, D., Hugel, V.; Blazevic, P.; Kilner, C.; J.;Lafourcade, P.; Marnier, B.; Serre, J., Maisonnier, B., “Mechatronic Design of NAO humanoid. “ IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. May 2009. [23] Wikipedia. “ VEX robotics Design System.” Internet document: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEX_Robotics_Design_System. [24] R. Manseur, A. Ieta, “Integration of an Innovative Engineering Program in a SUNY College.” Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. Austin , Tx, June 14-17 2009. [25] VEX-Robotics, “VEX Competition Overview.” Internet ocument: http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex/competition/.
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