Mobile Robots And Interdisciplinary Design Mobots

Abstract

An engineering curriculum challenge is to create an environment in which engineering problems can be solved using different strategies or variations to a common approach and that has a team component.This paper discusses the construction of Mobile Robots (MOBOTs) in the Electronic and Electrical Engineering undergraduate robotics laboratory of California State University, Sacramento that contains interdisciplinary engineering design.The course is open to all engineering and computer science students with a sufficient background.The MOBOT is composed of a based mobile platform (Brawn) driven by two motors on which is mounted an embedded microprocessor board with various sensors (Brain).Interactive C (IC), developed at the MIT Media Lab, is used to program the MOBOT for autonomous operation and nonautonomous tests.During the lab periods, MOBOT teams are formed to construct the MOBOTs with the major objective of competing in the MOBOT Olympic Games at the end of the semester.