Formerly coded as EG2310, this course aims to introduce freshmen who are interested in the Innovation & Design Programme to the basic principles of systems design that involve mechanical, electrical, and software elements. The course will cover the fundamentals of mechanical design, electrical hardware design, as well as middleware software frameworks to create an autonomous mobile robot with add-on sensors for targeting and a mechanically actuated payload. Students will learn the essentials of individual sub-systems through hands-on exercises and homework assignments, and subsequently integrate these subsystems in a final project utilising open-source software platforms to perform several mission tasks of different themes.

At the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Conceptualise a system using mechanical, electrical, and software elements to perform specific tasks.
• Model an electro-mechanical system using CAD software.
• Select appropriate mechanical and electrical components to realise the electro-mechanical system.
• Interface with an off-the-shelf mobile robot to control the robot and its electro-mechanical payload.
• Appreciate the complexities involved in designing an intelligent electro-mechanical system.
• Adopt simple technical documentation practices.

Workload: 4 units

Note: students who enrol in this course should have a laptop that is preferably Windows-based (x32/64) with minimum 16GB RAM, dedicated graphics card with at least 4GB memory, and 30GB of hard disk space.

Course syllabus

Mechanical

• Fundamentals of mechanical design, structures and machine elements (e.g. shafts, gears, fasteners, belts and pulleys, springs and dampeners, bearings)
• Basic CAD and CAM: design for prototyping, plastic FDM 3D printing, sheet metal CNC machining
• Integration and assembly: design for basic assembly, best practices, vibration protection, building and assembly

Electronics

• Fundamentals of electric circuits.
• Power calculations and budgeting for electro-mechanical systems
• Electronics system architecture through communications protocols: sensors and interfaces.
• Basic PCB design and use of ECAD software

Software

• Introduction to Linux: command line interface, file systems, and open source software
• Introduction to Git and project management tools (e.g. Asana, Trello, Slack, Microsoft Teams)
• ROS basics: master-slave principle, ROS releases, hardware compatibility, sensor compatibility
• Datasets in ROS: exchanging data through publishers and subscribers, pulling data from LiDAR for use in ROS, scripting for implementation of data source

Systems integration project

• Assembly
• Integration
• Testing
• Documentation

Find out more about past projects in this course on the CDE2310 blog page!