Self-selective multi-objective robot vision projects for students of different capabilities

Over the last decade or two, project experience has received increasing attention in engineering education. Many engineering departments now use projects as a central part of their education course. In mechatronics education, for example, the techniques and knowledge of several different disciplines need to be synergistically combined, and students acquire practical skills by participating in various interdisciplinary projects. However, it is not easy for an instructor to manage a project efficiently, particularly if the project is assigned to upper year college students because they can have significantly different levels of ability. To overcome this problem, we propose a multi-objective project scheme. A project is arranged to have multiple small objectives with different difficulty levels, and each student selects one objective that he or she thinks can be achieved – there is a trade-off between the difficulty level of an objective that a student selects and the maximum score that he or she can obtain. The instructor’s evaluation and advice can then be given to students according to their individual capabilities (which is implied by the selected objective). In this way, every student can actively participate in the project, and the approach enables most students to produce successful results. The proposed project management scheme can be implemented in a parallel or serial structure. Both structures were tried with robot vision projects for junior students majoring in Electronic Control Engineering at Daegu University, South Korea. We found that the project scheme provides enhanced engineering education as well as increased student engagement and motivation.