2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Using Quanser Platform to Introduce Engineering Technology Students to Autonomous Vehicles

The area of autonomous vehicles is not new, but the latest advances in various technologies gave it a new boost in the last decade and it keeps growing in interest. However, undergraduate curricula rarely include courses specific to this area, which is considered mostly an interdisciplinary graduate field. While various programs introduce students to the background needed to understand and approach the field, specific work on autonomous vehicle projects is left for extra curriculum activities or student clubs, and eventually for senior (capstone) projects. This paper presents the work of a team of electrical engineering technology students on an autonomous vehicle project using the Qcar from Quanser, with mentorship from a graduate student in mechanical engineering. The paper discusses the teamwork collaboration, the learning curve, the motivation built by the availability of a Quanser student competition, and how the work was integrated in a senior project design for the engineering technology students.

Authors

Dr. Otilia Popescu Old Dominion University [biography]

Dr. Otilia Popescu received the Engineering Diploma and M.S. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, and the PhD degree from Rutgers University, all in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests are in the general areas of communication systems, wireless communications, control theory, signal processing and engineering education. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Technology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She served as the Program Director for the Electrical Engineering Technology Program. In the past she has worked for the University of Texas at Dallas, University of Texas at San Antonio, Rutgers University, and Politehnica University of Bucharest. She is a senior member of the IEEE.
Logan Beaver Old Dominion University
Dr. Murat Kuzlu http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8719-2353 Old Dominion University [biography]

Murat Kuzlu joined the Engineering Technology Department at Old Dominion University (ODU) as an Assistant Professor in 2018. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Kocaeli University, Turkey,
Dr. Krishnanand Kaipa http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8095-938X Old Dominion University [biography]

Dr. Krishnanand Kaipa is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Old Dominion University. Dr. Kaipa received his BE in Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and his master’s and PhD degrees from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Vermont and the University of Maryland, where he was also a research assistant professor. Dr. Kaipa directs the Collaborative Robotics & Adaptive Machines (CRAM) Laboratory where his group actively conducts research in diverse fields including swarm intelligence, autonomous systems, human-robot collaboration, bio-inspired robotics, surgical robotics, and robotics in education. Dr. Kaipa currently serves as the Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Frontiers in Robotics & Artificial Intelligence, and ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025