2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 176: Summer Robotics Program for High School Students

Presented at Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Poster Session

ImpactLab is a pre-college program newly developed at our institute, which was offered in summer 2022 for the first time. It was a two-week residential summer experience for rising juniors and seniors in high school, that let them experience a college environment and explore a field of study. Various programs were offered to expose students to different professional fields, including arts, science, architecture, and engineering. Introduction to Robotics was one of the programs and 8 students enrolled the program this year. The students were introduced to college life by a full residential experience including activities in the evenings and weekends.

The academic portion for the selective field took place during the day, Monday through Friday, 6 hours a day, except only 2 hours on Friday. The main goal is to expose students to the Robotics discipline through active learning. The program was developed by faculty from the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs. Each faculty shared with students their own experience in the robotics field. Basic knowledge related to robotics was introduced and followed by hands on activities. Three projects were undertaken by the students. The first was setting up and programming an autonomous vehicle by Arduino. The autonomous vehicle project included sessions and lab activities for electrical theory and safety, benchtop pulse width modulation, Arduino pulse width modulation, Arduino with ultrasonic sensor, and ended with a SumoBot competition. Another project used Vex Robot equipment. Sessions and labs included introduction to industrial robotics, building of workcell, testing its movements, picking up/dropping off/transporting objects using the workcell. A third project was modeling of robots using SolidWorks. The students learned about CAD and built their own models.

The objective of this research is to measure the impact of the program on the students’ affective and learning experience. A survey was conducted as the students completed the projects to evaluate the content of the program. There were 8 students participated in the Robotics Program and all of them took the survey. The survey shows 75% students satisfied with the academic program, 100% satisfied with the interactions with faculty. Students reflected that they enjoyed the academic program experience very much and found the projects to be helpful in helping them to further identify their college interests and majors. This program was considered success, 75% students extremely likely or somewhat likely to apply and consider attending our institute in the future.

Authors

Dr. Jiahui Song Wentworth Institute of Technology [biography]

Jiahui Song received her B.S. in Automation and M.S. in Pattern Recognition & Intelligent Systems from Southeast University. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Old Dominion University. She is currently a Professor
Dr. Gloria Guohua Ma Wentworth Institute of Technology [biography]

Gloria Ma is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Technology. She has been teaching robotics with Lego Mindstorm to ME freshmen for several years. She is actively involved in community services of offering robotics workshops to midd
Dr. Douglas Eric Dow http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1472-7265 Wentworth Institute of Technology [biography]

Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (started 2008). Education B.A. in Liberal Arts Engineering from Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL); B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University (College Station, TX); M.S. in Computer Science from University of Colorado (Colorado Springs, CO); M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI). Worked in industry for about 9 years at Ampex Corporation (video systems manufacturing) in Colorado Springs CO, Panasonic (central research lab) in Osaka, Japan, and National University of Singapore (center for image enhanced medicine) in Singapore. Post Doc or Sabbatical research was done at Tohoku University (biology information systems) in Sendai, Japan, Mayo Clinic (respiration research lab) in Rochester MN, and Kansai University (knowledge information systems) in Osaka, Japan. Core focus involves embedded electronic systems for applications in medical rehabilitation, health monitoring, physical therapy and assistive technologies. This involves development of hardware and software systems with sensors, embedded control and mechanical actuators. Applications include respiration monitoring, sleep apnea, rehabilitation of impaired muscle for recovery of motor function, health monitoring for elderly to extend independent living, and diabetes management. These systems utilize internet of things (IoT) for remote communication between patient, medical staff, care-givers and instrumentation.
James R. McCusker Ph.D. Wentworth Institute of Technology [biography]

James R. McCusker is an Associate Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Since joining Wentworth in 2010, he has been heavily involved with an array of interdisciplinary design courses that range from
Suzanne Sontgerath Wentworth Institute of Technology
Ilie Talpasanu Wentworth Institute of Technology [biography]

Ilie Talpasanu received his BSc from University Polytechnica of Bucharest, a doctorate in Engineering Mechanics from the same university, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas in Arlington. For the last 17 years is a Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT), where he coordinated a team of faculty in developing the Master of Science Program in Mechanical Engineering. He worked for 4 years in industry at Motorola as a design engineer, 6 years as Dean of Academic Affairs in Arlington, Texas. His research interests include Micro and Nano Robotics for Cell Micro and Nano Manipulations, Computational Methods in Kinematics and Dynamics of Machines and Mechanisms, Design and Optimization of Vehicle Transmissions, Design of Robotic Systems. He authored 2 books, 2 book chapters, 11 peer reviewed journal papers, and over 15 technical papers presented at national and international conferences. He has been topic organizer at 17 conferences and congresses in U.S, Canada, Italy, Japan, Romania, and invited guest speaker in U.S.A, Germany, Japan, Malta.

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