福岡工大電気工学科TekBots<sup>®</sup> Hands-on工学プログラムによるマイクロコントローラ演習

Abstract

Today's engineering students benefit from an educational program that integrates their knowledge so that they can better solve engineering problems and become natural innovators. The TekBots Platforms for Learning™ (TekBots® PFL) developed at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) of Oregon State University (OSU) in the United States have integrated a curriculum into a coherent whole while providing an environment for innovation. The TekBots, which are an automobile robot and a platform for learning created for electrical and computer engineering students, have been designed to assist teaching many practical engineering skills; innovation, design, knowledge integration, and the “real” problem solutions of “real” systems. With the hands-on TekBots, the students can experience the real meaning to many of the seemingly ambiguous topics presented in lecture. The department of Electrical Engineering at Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT) has introduced this TekBots PFL to improve its engineering curriculum and has developed the TekBots course program used at FIT in a small scale. The program has been built by four subjects; Freshmen Laboratory for Electrical Engineering, C Programming, Mechatronics I and II. A TekBots project “TekBots Global Vision System” for a graduation thesis has also been carried out. Since two subjects, the Freshmen Laboratory for Electrical Engineering and the C Programming, have already been reported in our previous paper, this paper treats the results of implementation on the Mechatronics I and II. The Mechatronics I and II courses are hands-on laboratories for learning PWM programming and interrupt processing respectively. A microcontroller unit (MCU) is used to control the TekBots instead of the analog board used in previous courses. Intermediate student surveys for the Mechatronics I were carried out during term. It is shown that the surveys are not only useful for communication between students and faculty but also beneficial to an improvement of the TekBots course.