Traditional robotics
curricula progresses from mechanisms and software to functional
vehicles. Little time is left for application development, and participation
is limited to students with an engineering background. The use of
innovative web-based robotics applications developed by undergraduate
and graduate Engineering students in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and
Art made possible broader interdisciplinary collaboration. Since
the web interfaces require no specialized systems experience, Cooper
Union's non-engineering student body from the Art and Architecture
schools could now take part in a robotics class. This environment
provides productive cross-disciplinary participation and mutual
enrichment of engineering and arts students by the collaborative
development of a project.
The educational aim of the Robotic Renaissance Project was to provide
an open development environment - free of operating system or platform
expertise requirements - for students and faculty in all academic
disciplines to develop creative applications for mobile robots.
The outcome was the enrichment of cross-disciplinary curricula involving
engineering and the arts, including the following:
- Education of engineering and non-engineering students in material
beyond their major
- Development of student’s interdisciplinary team skills
- Development of student's presentation and communication skills
- Education of students in robotics engineering
- Development of faculty skills and interdisciplinary enrichment
Specific outcomes for engineering students include:
- The ability to apply knowledge from math and science engineering
to interdisciplanary projects
- The ability to design a system or component to meet desired
needs
- The ability to function on multidisciplinary teams
- The ability to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems
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