This week, The Stute had the pleasure of interviewing Louis Oh, the Schaefer School of Engineering & Science Lab Manager and Researcher. Oh provided updates on the research and efforts that have gone towards the development of the new ENGR 122 design project, set to launch in Spring 2025.
ENGR 122 Field Sustainable Systems with Sensors, often referred to as ‘Design 2’ or ‘D2’ by students, is a part of the engineering design spine. This design course is a 100-level class offered before the engineering disciplines split off into major-specific coursework– meaning that all engineers who graduate from Stevens have completed the course. The early design projects are significant unifying experiences for Stevens engineers and a staple on underclassmen students’ resumes as they begin their search for internships and jobs.
For the past few student cohorts, the culminating design project of the ENGR 122 course has been an autonomous robot, where students have been tasked with designing and constructing a 3D-printed robot capable of receiving LiDAR communication via an MQTT server. Students were expected to develop a basic linear algebra function to direct the robot along a course to reach four target locations while avoiding obstacles detected by ultrasonic sensors. The success of the student’s work was graded upon objective completion: reaching all four targets in under three minutes accounting for 100/150 points, with -5 point deductions for every collision. Additional points were awarded for every second under the three minute mark, and deducted for every second over.
Ava Wang for The Stute, taken from Spring 2022 ENGR 122 Section G Canvas page
The highest scorers from each course section moved onto the course-wide Gallois Autonomous Robot Competition taking place concurrently with the Innovation Expo. Cash prizes of $1000, $500, and $250 were up for grabs for the teams with the three highest scores.
In Spring 2025, the ENGR design project will shift to a new autonomous boat chase-and-catch style competition. Oh informs that inspiration for the change was rooted in a desire for more variation in the projects from year to year, as there were concerns about project repetition and design stagnation. The new project objectives aim to swap things up and keep ideas fresh, while placing a larger emphasis on the ‘systems’ portion of the ENGR 122 Field Sustainable Systems with Sensors course namesake.
The autonomous boat project will be a head-to-head style competition, unlike its timed predecessor. Two design groups will place their boats in a table top tank with a camera sensor placed above it. Instead of utilizing LiDAR to receive input on boat location, the autonomous boats will use cameras that detect oriented patterns on top of the boats as location input. Take a look at the picture of the table top tank set up below!
The new course will have an obstacle in the center that the boats must circularly navigate about. The boats will chase each other around the course, until the winner catches the loser. Winners will progress to the next round, bracket-tournament style. Oh kept in mind that students enjoy the competition element of the design project, and the new bracket style of competition allows more students to compete directly with one another, not just the top competitors from each section.
Design teams will design their own hull and keel and conduct a buoyancy analysis in the SolidWorks computer-aided design (CAD) software prior to 3D printing them. The sub six-hour printing requirement will be maintained. Oh informed that planning for this design project change began back in summer 2023. In order to make the project more approachable for first-year engineering students, and suitable for a 2-credit course load, a team of graduate and undergraduate researchers worked to develop aspects of the project, so the first-years can ‘plug and play’ with the different elements while still gaining exposure to basic proportional integral derivative (PID) tuning. Elements such as the code for the boat coordinates and functions for moving the boat in a straight line and turning were developed by Professor. Chang Beom Joo, and students Guoqing Zhang, Vanshika Mehal Mehta, Joel Martsinovsky, Samuel Kaz, Rahul Bhavesh Doshi and Daniel Ahn from the Open Integration Lab and Teaching Lab. Oh aptly described it as a win-win situation, where the ENGR 122 students gain exposure to sensors and systems at an experience-appropriate level, and the graduate students gain significant experience in course development.
Oh and the team plan to continue a rotation of ENGR 122 projects every few years to keep it fresh, meaning that the autonomous robot may make a return in a future years. Oh teased that the team is already working on the preliminary stages of the next project: a sand buggy race. The Fall 2024 engineering cohort will be the first to experience the new autonomous boat ENGR 122 project this spring, so keep your eyes peeled for the competition results next semester!
