Robotics Curriculum?

[Adam.garcia]

I'm currently the COO of our robotics team, and my goal is to prepare a more structured way of teaching the 4 important aspects of Robotics: Mechanical, Electronics, Design, and Programming.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could show me online resources (or books) I could use to help teach incoming students.

Also if your team already has a curriculum, I would be interested to see how your team teaches incoming students..



This is what I really want to focus on in each department:

Machining: Manual and CNC milling and lathing

Electronics: Electronics Theory, The uses of each electronic component on the FIRST robot.

Design: Solidworks tutorials

Programming: Tutorials and guides for programming robots in both LabVIEW and C++. We are still unsure whether we will stick with LabVIEW or switch to C++.

What do you think?

Thank you, and can't wait until next year!!

[Aren Siekmeier]

Ideally, you want someone with experience using the machines to demonstrate and walk through students through the procedures. In the new shop we shared with 3130 this year, we had all kinds of new tools (lathe, bandsaw, plasma cutter, mill) we didn't know how to use, but the school's shop manager gladly helped us through all of this. It should only take a lesson or two on procedure and then some supervision.

I'm not much of an electronics person, but I think the manual often has lots of useful information for the parts and what wires to use etc.

Solidworks has a good set of tutorials built in that our team uses. They should be located right on the Help menu. I find them very useful still, as they cover everything from the basics to motion simulation and stress analysis. I would start with the first ones. They are group into sets titled "Introductory" something or "Basics," and will get people familiar with common sketching, extrusion, relations, mating, and other methods. And it would probably help to at some point have them work on their own projects to put some of the knowledge into practice before the season starts. Another thing to maybe touch on is version control (modularity helps), as this is important to have down in the heat of the build season when multiple people are working on different parts of the robot.

This thread pertains to LabVIEW training:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=85675
Not sure about C++ (we are about in the same spot as you for making such a switch). This year to introduce students to LabVIEW we just walked them through our previous year's code, explaining how everything worked. Most of them had had some experience with RoboLab in FLL, so they caught on ok.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Adam.garcia

Design: Solidworks tutorials

While teaching CAD is never a bad thing, CAD =/= Design. I would model a design curriculum off of JVN's Engineering Design Process and then teach the tools that can help that process along (making prototypes you can learn something from, CAD, iteration, etc).

[delsaner]

Here at 1676, we spend a few weeks teaching the newcomers what they are interested in. When the rookies sign up for the team (give name, email, etc.), they state the top 3 subteams they are interested in learning. During the pre-season, a veteran (who is the leader of said subteam), will teach the rookies what that particular subteam is all about.

Our chassis subteam leader ran through the basics of a chassis, and helped the rookie construct a basic chassis.

Our electrical subteam leader taught how to build an electrical board. They drew out diagrams on a whiteboard, which explained the basics of electrical.

The list goes on and on...

I would recommend hands-on experience rather than reading a book or doing online activities. With hands-on experience, the rookies will have a pretty good idea of whats going on when build season comes around.

Hope this helps!

[Adam.garcia]

Thanks everybody for your input! I will be sure to suggest your comments to each of our departments and I'll see where it takes us.

[gren737]

Check out REC by intelitek - It's a curriculum designed by and for FIRSTer's that's nationally accredited.

http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/REC/

They are the sponsor for Team 40, Checkmate