A project-based laboratory for learning embedded system designs with support from the industry

Abstract

A project-based laboratory for learning embedded system designs with support from the industry is presented in this paper. The aim of the laboratory is to motivate students to learn building blocks of embedded systems and practical control algorithms by constructing a line following robot with quadratic interpolation technique to predict the line position. In addition to the basic hardware and software skills, several specific hardware circuits and software algorithms are included for the final project of line following robot construction. The students are allowed to discuss with the other groups of students to solve both the hardware and software problems in each experiment, although they have to answer the teacher’s questions on their own to get the score. To enhance the learning outcomes, a racing contest for the students’ line following robots is also organized to see how well the techniques learned in the laboratory are applied in the final project. The support from the local branch of Microchip Inc. lets students obtain microcontrollers at no cost. The feedbacks of students show that the final project of constructing line following robots and the racing contest really motivate the students to learn and verify actively all the skills included in the laboratory.