William Lehman is President of Bill's Robotic Solutions which he started in July of 2013. He has had over twenty years of experience in software and hardware development. He has worked on numerous projects in digital communication systems, robotics, and aerospace applications. Mr. Lehman received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from Catholic University of America. Introducing Kinematics with Robot Operating System (ROS) AbstractThe study of Kinematics is essential to Robotics. A robot, to perform most applications needs to process positional data and transform data from one frame of reference to another. Robots have sensors, links and actuators each with its own frame of reference, so transformations between reference frames can be quite tedious. Traditionally Kinematics for robots is introduced to students with MatLab and the Robotic Toolbox. In this paper we examine the introduction of Kinematics for robotics with the features and tools available in the open source Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS implements tools for Kinematics transforms (tf) as a key part of the ROS Core Libraries. ROS defines robots with the Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) standard based upon Extensible Markup Language (XML). URDF is in many respects similar to DenavitHartenberg (D-H) Convention, but with significant additional enhancements.We choose to introduce the Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) students to Kinematics and ROS so they would have greater insight into engineering projects involving robotics. We also found that using ROS in robotics projects not only makes the projects more interesting to students but, gives students an authentic experience with distributive systems and odometry sensors. Kinematics for robots uses Linear Algebra, Matrices, Natural logarithms (Euler's equation), Imaginary numbers and Trigonometry. The areas of mathematics we used to introduce kinematics for robotics to EET students are very similar to the mathematics to understand electricity, electric fields and circuit theory. We emphasize matrix operations, operations involving Triaminic functions and imaginary numbers. This paper summarizes the result of this approach.
William Lehman is President of Bill's Robotic Solutions which he started in July of 2013. He has had over twenty years of experience in software and hardware development. He has worked on numerous projects in digital communication systems, robotics, and aerospace applications. Mr. Lehman received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from Catholic University of America. LOW COST ROBOT ARMS FOR THE ROBOTIC OPERATING SYSTEM (ROS) AND MOVEITIt is not uncommon for students in high school and college to design and build low cost robot arms. This paper summarizes the results of an undergraduate assignment to design and build a low cost robot arm, as well as a robot arm controller. The robot arm controller uses accelerometers to control the motion of the robot arm. The robot arm controller can also be used to record and playback a sequence of motions for the arm. The robot arm controller was Arduino Uno Micro-controller based to keep costs down. A serial interface was also implemented for the arm controller so the arm could be controlled from a PC. The students had a mentor from industry to guide them in the design of their robot arm and controller. The mentor also evaluated the robot arm and similar designs for use with the Robotic Operating System (ROS) and Moveit software, for possible use of Moveit on future student projects.ROS and Moveit bring interesting functions for control of robot arms. The Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL) is used by the Moveit, providing a variety of motion planning algorithms to control the students arm. A 3D Camera can be directly used by Moveit to provide obstacle avoidance functions for the robot arm. The results of the evaluation of Moveit were shown to the students in a video as well as the other results of the evaluation giving them insight into how an embedded sub-system they developed can interact as part of a complex system.
Measurement of student learning outcomes is one of the key academic activities that higher educational institutes employ to ensure accountability and assess what knowledge and skills students acquire form their academic work. Such activities are also important for maintaining accreditation with recognized accreditation organizations. Savannah State University (SSU), a SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) accredited higher educational institute, measures six Institutional Student Learning Outcomes (ISLOs) each academic year. Thus, all degree awarding programs at SSU obligatorily assess these six ISLOs every year. In addition to measuring the six ISLOs, Engineering Technology Department faculty members at SSU are also required to assess the ABET a-k Student Outcomes (SOs) as a part of the accreditation requirement. Assessment of the ISLOs and ABET SOs in two different platforms are sometimes reparative, time consuming, and might be cumbersome for some faculty members. Therefore, Engineering Technology Department of SSU has been implementing an assessment process that utilizes only one platform to measure both the ISLOs and ABET SOs. This process has led to the development of an exemplary format of annual assessment report. The main focus of the paper is to describe how the implementation of the direct assessment takes place in one platform that serves both SACs and ABET. This paper will also highlight how the assessment culture in the department plays a big role in the continuous improvement of the programs offered.
The limited resources in the traditional labs have restricted the effective and innovative circuit design projects from freshmen Circuits 1 class to Capstone ideas. The limited number of measuring and signal-generating instruments makes it difficult for students to engage in these projects when they need to share these instruments or schedule to use them at a specific time. Furthermore, it is a challenge for students to learn how to use various instruments including power supplies, multi-meters, oscilloscopes, and function-generators if not used in conjunction with each other. Likewise, it is also highly unlikely that students will acquire all of this rather expensive equipment and design a lab environment at their residence. Under such constraints, students cannot gain the necessary hands-on experience. Moreover, students have a tendency to play a minimal role in group-assigned projects, leading to minimal outcomes, which further weaken their accountability and curiosity. This will seriously reduce the students' aptitude for circuit designs and weaken a vast majority of other necessary engineering and technology based skills. A new approach, in which each student owns a circuit design station, is possible with a new compact device, which has incorporated many of these devices into one unit. Students can conduct many circuit designs spontaneously using their own remote lab. They can assemble and test various analog, digital, or mixed signal circuits including those from classroom textbooks. This paper will show that students can now set up a convenient remote laboratory to design and test low-power circuits. This lab environment is the newly launched Analog Discovery from Digilent. Analog Discovery is a low cost and portable test and measurement device, which provides various instruments including two oscilloscope probes, two arbitrary waveform generator, two power supplies, a voltmeter, a logic analyzer, and a pattern generator in a single module. This unit communicates with the WaveForms software and receives power from a standard USB port. This paper will introduce the course outline and present a very simple lab assignment, which students would typically test during the first few days of an introductory class. This example demonstrates the flexibility and ease-of-use while designing or testing a circuit with the Analog Discovery from any remote location.
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