WINNING THE ASEE 2006 ROBOTICS DESIGN COMPETITION-GUIDING STUDENTS TO SUCCESS

摘要

Robotics Model Design Competition sponsored by the Two Year College Division (TYCD) of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) provides an avenue for freshman and sophomore student teams in two year as well as four year colleges and universities to participate in a creative engineering design project. Historically Black Colleges and University Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) at National Science Foundation (NSF) have provided support for development of ACTION( Advanced Curriculum and Technology-based Instructional Opportunities Network) at UMES. The ACTION program promotes inquiry based active learning and research projects among undergraduate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) majors. Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics students responded enthusiastically when the authors proposed the idea of participating in the (ASEE) 2006 Robotic Model Design Competition at one of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers(ASME) student section meetings at UMES in the fall of 2005. (The authors serve as the advisors for ASME student section chapter at UMES). The student leader of the section quickly put together a team of five freshman and sophomore engineering, engineering technology and mathematics students to develop a proposal to UMES ACTION program. The authors supported the proposal development efforts. The proposal got funded and provided the resources for project execution and travel. A team of eleven freshmen and sophomore students from Engineering, Engineering Technology and Mathematics departments of University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) participated in the American Society for Engineering Education's (ASEE) 2006 Robotics Model Design Competition project. The event was sponsored by the Two-year College Division(TYCD) of ASEE and was open to freshman and sophomore student teams from two year as well as four year colleges and universities. The competition required teams to design and build an autonomous robot capable of delivering ping pong balls to each of four corner pockets located on an 8ftx8ft plywood track in a sequence. Each team was evaluated on the basis of a written report, an oral presentation, and scores obtained from the best two runs out of four runs on the racing track. Sixteen student teams across the nation participated in the event. UMES entered two teams in the competition who called themselves "Hawks 1" and "Hawks 4". The student team "Hawks 1" won the competition. Video clips of both design projects as they executed the specified task at the 2006 ASEE Robotics Model Design Competition can be viewed at: http://www.umes.edu/asme/robots.htm. This paper describes the design projects "Hawks 1" and "Hawks 4" and its relevance to ABET learning outcomes.