The paper, “Developing a Robotic Kit for Mechatronic Engineering Education,” was presented at the 120th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference in Atlanta, Ga. and will appear in the association’s publication.

The collaborative work between representatives from the engineering and technology department, Drs. Hossein Rahemi, department chair and Shouling He, assistant professor, and Vaughn mechatronics engineering student William Sarkis Babikian ’15, is being presented during the robotics and automation session on Monday June 24, 2013.

“Only three papers were accepted for presentation at the conference and we are thrilled to have ours among them,” said Rahemi. “This paper represents the hard work and dedication our students and advisers show and we hope it can inspire students to explore more novel and feasible solutions in their future careers in engineering.”

The paper discusses the development of a robotic kit for the courses in the mechatronic engineering program, which is a discipline that combines elements of mechanical, electrical, computer and control engineering.  Students in the program are required to possess not only broad multi-disciplinary knowledge but also strong hands-on technical skills.

To achieve the program’s educational objective, a robotic kit – the VEX™ robotic arm with a granular jamming gripper was developed so students can visually understand the design process of a robotic manipulator based on the theorem they learned from the classes, such as forward and inverse kinematics, robotic dynamics and trajectory planning.