Practical Application of Robotics Competition for STEM Education
- Conference
- Location
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Tampa, Florida
- Publication Date
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June 15, 2019
- Start Date
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June 15, 2019
- End Date
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June 19, 2019
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Student
- Page Count
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18
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--33181
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/33181
- Download Count
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680
Paper Authors
Sidra Gibeault California State University, Los Angeles
Sidra is an Undergraduate Student in Electrical Engineering at Cal State LA. She currently serves as the president of the Robosub student organization, the events coordinator for the Biomedical Engineering Society, and is an active member of the microfluidics and point-of-care diagnostics research lab of Dr. Frank Gomez. Her research interests include computer vision and biomedical applications of artificial intelligence.
Joseph D. Iorio California State University, Los Angeles
Joseph is an Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student at Cal State LA. Joseph is an undergraduate research assistant, the Vice President of CSULA's Robosub team, and he recently began an internship at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Outside of engineering education, his research interests are in the field of trajectory planning and control for potential future Mars exploration aircraft.
Jorge Diego Santillan California State University, Los Angeles AUV
Mr. J.Diego Santillan is an Electrical Engineer employed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, currently pursuing his Master's in Computer Engineering. Diego acted as the President for the Robosub team as well as the senior design team lead for the same project in 2018. Diego Santillan now serves as the Robosub senior advisor at California State University and is an experienced Project Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the Defense & Space industry. Passionate about developing autonomous and unmanned systems to fill the needs of operators in a wide range of environments. Skills include but not limited to: Customer Service, Engineering Methodologies and Applications, Strategic Planning, and Microsoft Office. Strong program and project management professional with an Electrical Engineering/Minor on Biomedical Engineering focused in Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automation Engineering from California State University-Los Angeles.
He Shen California State University, Los Angeles
He Shen is currently with Department of Mechanical Engineering at California State University, Los Angeles. His research interests include robotics and control, as well as engineering education.
Mark Tufenkjian P.E. California State University, Los Angeles
Dr. Tufenkjian is Chair of the Civil Engineering Department at Cal. State LA. His research interests include advanced geotechnical laboratory testing and in-situ testing of soft clay soils. His research has been funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Department of Defense. He is currently the PI on a STEM grant from ONR to provide engineering students pathways to careers at Navy Labs in the southern California region.
Abstract
As robots become an increasingly integral part of our society, the study of robotics has a great potential to influence Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. Robotics is a multidisciplinary field and requires an organic integration of resources and optimized operation for its impact to be maximized. This paper presents the practice and significance of using a robotic submarine competition (Robosub competition) to improve the engineering education of STEM majors at XXXX. The competition requires students to design and build a submarine robot to autonomously navigate through a series of tasks that mimic ongoing research in robotic systems. First, the organization of this program at XXXX is introduced, including the involvement of faculty advisors, a student organization, and senior design teams. Second, the integration of this program into students’ curricular and extracurricular activities are discussed. Many design tasks can be used strengthen a variety of courses throughout almost all engineering and computer science disciplines. Aside from that, student participants obtain many core skills that are critically important for them to be successful in their future careers. These skills include major related technical skills and beyond, such as communication, leadership, management, and cooperation skills. Third, the impact of the competition among student participants, the engineering program, and the institution are summarized. Although this program has been only established for about two and a half years at XXXX, many positive results in improving college engineering education have been achieved. Finally, discussion of the existing challenges to maintain the program long-term and possible future solutions are presented.
Gibeault, S., & Iorio, J. D., & Santillan, J. D., & Shen, H., & Tufenkjian, M. (2019, June), Practical Application of Robotics Competition for STEM Education Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33181
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