Experiences in Developing an Experimental Robotics Course Program for Undergraduate Education

An interdisciplinary undergraduate-level robotics course offers students the chance to integrate their engineering knowledge learned throughout their college years by building a robotic system. Robotics is thus a core course in system and control-related engineering education. This paper summarizes the experience of developing robotics courses presented in the literature and shares the author's experiences through many years of teaching and developing robotics courses with other educators in the Department of Mechatronics, Chungnam National University (CNU), Daejeon, Korea. First, the CNU robotics course described here has classroom and laboratory sections. In class, students learn the theories behind robotics and practice them by performing simulation studies. In parallel, students perform robotics exercises in the laboratory. Second, the lab exercises are focused on hands-on experiments on robot systems; these include an experimental kit, LEGO robots, humanoid robots, industrial robots, and home service robots. Third, competition-based learning is explored by assigning a class project to develop a boxing robot, which covers both manipulation and mobility. Finally, the course introduces robotics-associated outreach activities. The analysis of several years of student evaluation is presented.