A systems engineering Persistence Of Vision teaching module integrating coordinated sensing, actuation, multithreaded computation, custom PCB design, and inductive power transfer

摘要

We present a new electro-mechanical educational platform to educate students in interdisciplinary engineering design principles. We focus specifically on the design and use of an extensible Persistence Of Vision (POV) educational robotics kit. The prototype of this kit, presented here, is designed to introduce embedded systems to students, motivating the learning of printed circuit board (PCB) design and the integration of inductive power transfer, coordinated sensing, Bluetooth communication, computational features, and multithreading. Each of these components is not particularly difficult by itself, but it is sometimes daunting for the student to combine such subsystems effectively to develop larger systems capable of complex functionality. Educational platforms such as the one proposed in this effort should be quite useful to help students develop confidence in the design and construction of efficient robotic systems capable of complex behavior.