Scientia Iranica D (2018) 25(3), 1582{1592 Sharif University of Technology Scientia Iranica Transactions D: Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering http://scientiairanica.sharif.edu Educational robot for principles of electrical engineering M. Rahnavard, S.M.H. Alavi, S. Khorasani, M. Vakilian, and M. Fardmanesh School of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Received 30 January 2016; received in revised form 28 September 2016; accepted 7 November 2016 KEYWORDS Abstract. An educational robot is described, which is designed and constructed for use in the laboratory of Principles of Electrical Engineering. The discrete nature of design, Electrical engineering conforming to a simple block strategy, allows for fairly easy introduction of basic and education; fundamental concepts of Electrical Engineering to the freshman students, including control, Educational robot; actuation, wireless signal transmission, and analogue/digital conversions. Each block or Principles of electrical module represents one or few engineering ideas and helps the students to understand the engineering; interplay and connection between system divisions, and enhance their creative thinking. Laboratory-based Circuits are designed and implemented such that both structure and functionality of each education. module are clearly presented. Inputs and outputs as well as major signals can be traced and measured through several test points. © 2018 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Electronics Engineers (IEEE) set up a committee to- gether with representatives from industries, which de- Among the modern sciences, Electrical Engineering vised a curriculum for EE; this curriculum was intended (EE) has deep roots in basic sciences, especially math- to extend engineering pro ciencies rather than methods ematics and physics. In 1882, the rst course on EE needed by industries. In 1994, the US National Science was o ered as an optional course in the Department Foundation (NSF) ordered revisions in science and of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. engineering curricula to improve creativity in the edu- From 1903 through the early days of World War II, cational system of engineering disciplines. Since then, EE was based on the education of engineering skills, many e orts have been made to identify the weaknesses facts, and methods as demanded by the industry [1,2]. and strengths of the educational methodology in EE [3- However, major breakthroughs such as Radio and 8]. Of particular interest has been better engagement of RADAR were accomplished by the Electrical Engineers female students in the area of EE [9]. These objectives educated in these years. It was not until after this can be met only if the students have a deeper and better period of time that a modern educational system was engineering sense. Furthermore, there has been a need founded on strengthening mental skills, rather than for sustained improvement in the quality of graduated solely educating skills and practices. engineers [10] along with the rapid advancement in sci- In the year 1978, the Institute of Electrical and ence and technology, which was delayed for years owing to the old-fashioned and classic systems of education *. Corresponding author. in use. One of the major paths towards meeting the E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Khorasani) objectives of a modern educational system is to present fundamental engineering concepts to freshman students doi: 10.24200/sci.2017.4369 in the rst semester. In this system, the students are M. Rahnavard et al./Scientia Iranica, Transactions D: Computer Science & ... 25 (2018) 1582{1592 1583 given an opportunity to obtain a wide view of EE along and enhance the creative thinking using only discrete with deep understanding of fundamental concepts, thus or low integration components. Access to important getting involved in obtaining the necessary knowledge signals and the possibility of measurements via stan- and skills of engineering. dard equipment have been considered, too. These In the traditional curriculum of Iran, under- particular features of the implemented robot would graduate students of EE in the rst year are only be advantageous in system-level breakdown compared exposed to advanced levels of mathematics and physics; to other similar educational robots. By using this hence, before the end of their rst year, they have robot, students observe how a complicated system can no idea about EE. Considering the importance of be made like a jigsaw puzzle, every piece of which time in absorbing the concepts, an introduction to is obtained from circuits made out of basic discrete the fundamentals of EE in the rst year should have electrical, electronic elements and integrated circuits. a critical role in improving the learning eciency of This design aligns very well with the necessity of an students. Hence, the School of EE at Sharif University accelerated educational program [50] while developing of Technology (SUT) has devised a fully amended creative engineering skills. curriculum, in which the freshman students need to pass a 4-unit course entitled Principles of Electrical 2. Structure of principles of electrical Engineering. This novel method of combined course- engineering plus-laboratory o ering has been in practice constantly since then, and extended to many other undergraduate The 4-units course of Principles of Electrical Engineer- courses. Duke University was also among the rst ing consists of 3 units of theory in the class and 1 unit institutions to revise their whole curriculum of EE, in the laboratory o ered to the rst-semester students. and they designed a laboratory based course entitled The major theme of this course is to introduce students Fundamentals of Electrical and Computer Engineering to the fundamental and basic concepts of EE from an for freshman students [11]. application and engineering point-of-view so that at the In this course, the students are exposed and intro- end of the semester, the students would be able to sense duced to various disciplines of EE, while in laboratory and analyze simple electrical and electronic circuit- they experiment with EE from discrete elements all the based systems. The course comprises all elds of EE way to an elaborate example system: a remote-control and for every topic, there exists a suitable experiment. multifunctional educational robot. The reason behind All circuits are modular and packed in transparent this choice is clear; the robots could elegantly present a containers to display the actual elements. combination of many engineering disciplines in a single It should be pointed out that despite the simplic- attractive system. The educational value of robots for ity of the course syllabus, all of the instructed material this purpose was soon recognized [12-14], which would is used in the upcoming courses and the students learn o er versatile learning platforms to the students. the subjects in such a way that no major repetition Most existing educational robot designs are based of content would be needed later. In addition, the on Integrated Circuits (ICs), Field Programmable Gate students are requested to carry out exercises in elec- Arrays (FPGAs), or embedded processing units [14- trical and electronic circuits with SPICE simulation 19]. Expectedly, the use of robots in education of software where they can compare the practical and students at the university level has been on rise, theoretical/simulation results. drawing signi cant attraction among academia in the Students get acquainted with various elds of recent years [20-48]. However, a survey reported in [20] EE through illustration of concepts and attractive also justi ed the conclusion that among numerous applications in Communications, Power, Microelec- educational robot designs, no one would be applicable tronics, Biomedical, and Control Engineering at an to the education of electronic circuits. The reason understandable level for a freshman student. In the is that the progress has been toward high-integration meantime, selected professors from those elds are and software-control, instead of system breakdown and invited to deliver lectures within their own elds of modular design. Nao [49] is a famous example of such expertise in order to provide maximum bene t for the an advanced and versatile robot, to which students students. While encouraging students to participate in have only external software access. the lectures, it is anticipated that future graduates of Therefore, the main advantage of the imple- EE will have a much deeper and wider understanding mented design in this paper is the use of components and knowledge with respect to the applications and re- with a low level of integration, which allows the lation between theory and practice. The last laboratory freshman student to deeply understand the typical session is devoted to an experiment, which is a kind of operation and connection of circuits and components collective teaching of various introduced aspects of EE in a real complex system. Therefore, the motivation is in the course based on a remote-control modular robot, to fully understand the operation of basic subsystems as described next. 1584 M. Rahnavard et al./Scientia Iranica, Transactions D: Computer Science & ... 25 (2018) 1582{1592 3. Educational robot the PWM signal is Amplitude-Modulated (AM) in the 27MHz band for transmission to the robot. The implemented educational robot as shown in Fig- In the robot, the data on air is received as serial ure 1 consists of two parts: The rst part is the data by a super-heterodyne radio. Clock and data are remote-control unit by which the user can control the separated from the serial data, and the data is restored robot car; the second part is the robot itself, which to the parallel form and displayed on the local Light- receives and executes the commands. In Figure 2, the Emitting-Diode (LED) display as in the control unit. block diagram of the control unit and in Figure 3, the Digital commands corresponding to velocity and direc- structure of the robot are illustrated.