Interdisciplinary Internship Projects Utilizing Legacy Robotic Equipment under Budget Constraints at a Small-sized Institution

Abstract

In this paper we would like to share interdisciplinary project experiences with other small universities who intend or hold an interest in participating interdisciplinary STEM projects with their students. The interdisciplinary science and engineering projects attract students from various disciplines and backgrounds such as computer science, electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, and others. When initiating a robotic vision project at East Stroudsburg University, it began with open discussions upon what resources were available to us, what topics we were interested in, and and what we might be albe to accomplish. The students participating in the project were exposed to diverse challenging problems which were hardly seen in their class course works, and to encounter technical difficulties related to the project. The students were encouraged to work first upon their interests and specialties such as hardware, software, and programming languages. The students routinely presented their understanding of possible problems and solutions to other team members because the projects require sharing the knowledge and helping each other to achieve a common goal of the project success. All the team members including faculty adviser were generally in discussions upon finding and solving the problems, with self-motivated learning and helping each other, and in playing their roles for the project development, management, and technological entrepreneurship of rebuilding the old robot arms within university budget constraints. The projects using robot arms seemed to have outperformed in the students’ learning outcomes, motivated the students to enhance their career interests into research fields, and prepared them to an advanced science and technology level in solving practical problems.