Quanser Exposes Students to Real-World Challenges In Sustainable Engineering

If you’re a regular visitor to our engineering blog, you already know about the Quanser Challenge, the unique, ISTEC-based global student competition to design new approaches to teaching sustainable engineering.

The appeal of this competition is simple: it will enhance students’ industry-ready skills by exposing them to the complexities of real world engineering design while they’re still in school. It’s also a chance to use the kind of powerful, industry-based tools they’ll be working with after graduation, equipment like data acquisition boards from a leading company like National Instruments and related tools from Quanser.  Ultimately the Quanser Challenge gives students a golden opportunity to put their thinking caps on and help advance the cause of sustainable engineering. Little wonder we feel that everyone who has entered this competition will be a winner, since the exercise is so relevant to real-world needs and experiences.

Watch the short video as Tom Lee, Quanser's Chief Education Officer, outlines the benefits of the Quanser Challenge and offers participating students some basic tips on achieving the best possible results. 

On Educational Philosophy and Cheeseburgers

Recently, I found myself at a conceptual singularity during a visit and presentation to a prominent university. An accomplished professor presented some very insightful though contrarian points to our proposal and in the end, basically challenged the foundational framework of what we were presenting. It was like showing up to a pot-luck party at a vegan friend’s house with a plate of cheeseburgers.

When one works for a vibrant, innovative technology company, it’s very easy to get caught up in our strategic vision and forget the fact that the societal context that we work in is quite complex and is not quite as concise or clean as one would wish it to be. The great irony is that if people like me do our day jobs well, then the great complexities of human existence get boiled down into very succinct, high impact, bullet points that crisply describe how our offerings improve our customers’ work and indeed their lives.

Quanser engineer Peter Martin goes for a test drive...
not realizing he's headed for a philosophical singularity.

That’s great business but it’s not without its pitfalls. We at Quanser feed into the education system. Education is something that is universally acknowledged as the foundation of a stable, dynamic, modern society. The opinions on how best to deliver education, however, is one of the most complex, multifaceted debates that society engages in.

The Nature of Motivation
The philosophical question embodied in this discourse was “What is the nature of motivation?”. The debate erupted when Quanser engineer Peter Martin and I were presenting some of our recent lab concepts and, in particular, the notion of mapping a strong application framework around the fundamental control concepts. The new Quanser Driving Simulator is an example. The benefits bullet points are pretty simple:

• increase motivation among students with an engaging, familiar visual environment
• better connect theoretical concepts to real applications
• introduce students to modern analytical techniques that are used in industry

As it turns out not everyone viewed it as that simple. The rhetorical polka went something like this:
Yours truly: … so as you can see, this technique represents a fresh approach to a critical problem of motivation in the curriculum …

Passionate and highly accomplished professor: … I don’t think that’s at all motivating …

Yours truly: … what do you mean?

Passionate and highly accomplished professor: … the DC motor is too abstract. It looks nothing like a real car. How could the student connect that to reality?!

Yours truly: … [to self] how did I miss this?

How much abstraction can a student handle before losing motivation for his subject?
This question can lead to a lively and valuable debate.

The Balance Between Representation and Abstraction
By necessity, educators must provide some representation or abstraction of the real world in their teaching. Otherwise we’d be forced to supply every student with a BMW and a Boeing 787. The heated debates often center on the level of abstraction. In this particular incident, the professor was fundamentally opposed to the concept of using visualization to inject realism onto an arguably abstract DC Motor. Consequently, a lab dealing with automotive techniques should literally have a physical vehicle of some sort moving around. Any evidence we presented on our choice of visualization over a simplified physical vehicle in the end got the discussion to a stalemate.

The Challenge of Curriculum Modernization
Curriculum modernization, indeed, is one of those really wicked problems that society is currently dealing with. The historical pedagogy in engineering education pegs the abstraction balance point at the very theoretical extreme – i.e. mathematical models and pure analysis. More recently, with the emergence of “casual mechatronics” like Mindstorms and other hobby platforms, we see professors opting to motivate students with, for the lack of a better word, fun, and arguably at the expense of rigor.

The Quanser Pedagogy Is Actually a Hybrid
At Quanser we believe in the importance of rigor and strong analytics in engineering design but we try our best to present the experience in engaging dynamic environments. And for the most part it is very well received and very successful in real universities.

The business of serving academia can be challenging. In some ways, a university is like any customer in any segment. They have needs and the vendor who can best meet those needs at a good price wins the deal. In other ways though it is very different in that the decision-making processes and internal dynamics have a uniqueness that don’t exist in other large human organizations. Principally, it often seeks and celebrates dissent.

Ongoing Debate Is Important To Pedagogical Success
I recently stumbled on a LinkedIn thread in which a young recent-Ph.D. instructor was soliciting support for some collective response to key contemporary issues facing the higher education community. What ensued is truly classic academia: a lengthy trail of very articulate and passionate points of support and points of dissent. Even before the digital age, this existed. The main difference today is that we seem to have readily accessible transcripts.

The business of serving academia can be challenging.  In some ways their
decision-making processes and internal dynamics are completely unique.

A casual reading of that LinkedIn thread or a light reflection of my own encounter with the professor might indicate that things are unraveling. For me, it’s exactly the opposite. Frank expressions of well-conceived opinions on complex issues are critical to the success of the modern university, even if the direction is non-convergent. The mind is at its sharpest when challenged right down to one’s core beliefs. The main thing that I took away from all of this is that we need to be vigilant. As our lab concepts continue to enjoy increasing adoption we can’t forget that what we have delivered is one possible answer to a series of extremely complex, if not intractable, academic challenges. The good news is, Quanser has a very strong history of managing complexity. Our range and diversity of products and our ambitious goals for curriculum innovation are clear testaments to our appreciation and respect for the unique and treasured aspects of global academia.

As for our disagreement about the driver simulation, the feedback we got from the university was that they thoroughly enjoyed the lively debate and the debate may or may not have any influence in the future on their adopting this approach. In other words, it was one of those classically orthogonal discussions… heated in the long run, but likely neutral in impact. The ultimate irony is that the system was largely refined in collaboration with that institution’s faculty so the debate was primarily an intellectual engagement of peers and not so much a judgment on a concept. Having said that, I will be better prepared for the next time… and I’ll leave the cheeseburgers to my kids.

- Tom Lee

As Chief Education Officer at Quanser, Tom Lee is focused on spearheading the development of Quanser's global academic community. He is closely involved with Quanser's technology and solution development process and the company's partner and alliance programs. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and an MASc and BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Naval Postgraduate School Expands Their Quanser UVS Lab

January in Toronto is not the nicest time of year, so when I was asked to help set up an expanding graduate laboratory at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California I didn't take too long to think about it. Having been to NPS last year to help set up their first Quanser Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UVS) Lab, I knew that Monterey in January is a nice place to be.

In a busy 3-day visit to the Naval Postgraduate School, Quanser's Cameron Fulford installed the latest version of QUARC control software, installed and demoed over 10 unique Quanser experiments, and trained the graduate students in the use of Quanser's Qball-X4 UAVs.

In my last visit to NPS, I set up a UVS lab with one Qball-X4 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and some Qbot Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV), along with a handful of rotary experiments based on our ubiquitous Quanser SRV02 Rotary Base Unit. This year, NPS was expanding the UVS lab as well as the controls lab by adding 3 new Qballs, 3 SRV02 plants, 3 linear cart plants, and a large number of rotary and linear modules that allow experiments to be quickly swapped on the plants. As a result, NPS now has a world class graduate-level controls teaching lab, and students there have unparalleled access to hands-on experiments.

In a short, 3-day visit I was able to upgrade their lab to QUARC 2.2, install and demo over 10 unique rotary and linear experimentsto faculty and students, as well as set up and train the graduate students in the use of our Qball-X4 UAVs, which they are using for a variety of multi-vehicle, autonomous control research applications. By the end of the third day, the graduate students were taking turns flying the Qballs using joysticks, but they hope to soon have them flying by themselves!

I'm looking forward to the results of their multi-vehicle research using our Qball UAVs and the next chance I get to visit Monterey.

- Cameron Fulford

The Six Stages of a FIRST Time Mentor

Beginning in January of this year, I had the opportunity to volunteer to mentor a FIRST Robotics team at St. Robert CHS. I had only a vague idea of what I was getting into, but the videos that I had see online seemed to be filled with manic high school students almost euphoric with excitement and passion for robotics. Anything that could get high school students that excited about learning about geeky things like programming, sensors and mechanical engineering was something I wanted to be a part of (spoiler alert: I’m a huge nerd).

A (very) short two months later, a robot was born and I had identified the six stages of mentoring a FIRST team:

Stage One – The elementary school dance: The high school dance is a ubiquitous analogy. Students and mentors grouped around a room, mostly keeping to the relative safety of our individual peers. Some brave students and mentors came together to dance around the topic of what the heck this robot was actually supposed to do...and how?

Quanser's engineeering and production mentors helped the project get off to a great start,
laying the foundation for the students to build on.

Stage Two – The sermon: The classic paradigm of teachers preaching to a class of students has existed for as long as time. Unfortunately, it has become so engrained in the educational psyche that old habits die hard. Having been intimidated by a room full of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students, we mentors may have fallen back into our comfort zone. The beautiful part about FIRST, however, is that you can’t lecture for long. There’s work to be done. The build team and our crack production mentors went to work on getting a head start on the build, prompting the rest of the mentors to get our hands dirty.

Stage Three – Shock and awe: This stage was the real turning point for the mentors, and to a certain extent the project overall. As the students got down to work, we mentors started to realize just how talented, bright, and capable they were. I will never forget walking into the shop on a Saturday afternoon to help get the control system up and running, only to find out that it was already pretty much complete. As our confidence in the students grew, and the students’ confidence in themselves was reinforced, the project really took off as the students began to invest their hearts into the project.

The students quickly took over the project,
while the mentors stepped back into a supporting role.

Stage Four – Tool rack: As the students took over the project, we moved into the culminating stage of the build process. In this stage the students took an active role in the construction and design of key elements of the robot. At the same time we mentors began to take a more passive role: holding a tool here, lending a hand there, and only occasionally interjecting with a friendly piece of advice. I really started to feel like I was a part of their team, and that we were all in it together.

Stage Five – Pride: As the robot came together and “bag day” approached, I was really struck by the overwhelming pride I felt in what the students had achieved. I think that the team did an amazing job, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

The students eventually took control of the project and became fully involved
 in the construction and design of key elements of the robot.

Stage Six – Repeat: As the competition day draws closer, talk around the Quanser office seems to be turning more and more to the subject to FIRST. Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone mentioning competition results, interesting robot designs, strategies, etc. I can’t wait until next year’s build, and I know the other mentors feel the same way too. Go 4001!

Quanser Challenges Engineering Students to Create an Experiment to Teach Sustainable Engineering

--> Quanser recently announced sponsorship of a unique global design student competition, the Quanser Challenge, where engineering students devise an approach to teaching concepts in sustainable engineering.

To launch this competition, Quanser is collaborating with the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC), the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development (SPEED) and the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES). Students entering the competition will be tasked with developing an experiment applied to solving challenges in sustainable engineering while enhancing the undergraduate-level learning experience. Specifically, students will be focused on developing this experiment as an extension of the QNET range of control experiments for the National Instruments’ ELVIS.

The winning entry could subsequently become a university-level Quanser teaching experiment used in engineering faculties around the world. This educational solution would better prepare thousands of engineering students to tackle real-world problems in sustainable engineering and make the prospect of a diverse range of future solutions in this field more viable.

“We’re betting that the global community of engineering students can channel their unique perspectives and youthful passion to create teaching tools that will help their peers develop skills that could literally save the planet, “says Paul Gilbert, Quanser’s CEO. “Their problem-solving capabilities are enormous and we want to help bring them to the surface.”

Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer is also anticipating the results of the competition. “We’ll get to work with some very bright young people who have both the energy and audacity to propose wonderfully creative if not outrageous ideas; so outrageous that they might actually work!”

The deadline for registration of design projects is April 1, 2012. Projects must be submitted by August 1, 2012. The winner will be announced September 1, 2012. Prizes include a trip to the World Engineering Education Forum, October 15 – 18, 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the benefits that accrue from recognition as worldwide winners within the global engineering community.

For further information on contest guidelines and registration, visit http://www.istec.org/2012-student-contest/

Real Quanser Robot = Readiness for Real World Engineering

Dr. Stephen Mascaro of the University of Utah is focused on preparing his students to apply control theory to real-world applications.

Dr. Stephen Mascaro of the University of Utah wanted the students in his Robotic Control course to gain hands-on experience controlling a real robot. He also wanted to prepare his students to apply the control theory they were learning to real-world applications. Working with Quanser to develop a 2 DOF Serial Robot, he achieved both aims. Dr. Mascaro describes his work below. Watch the videos from his lab and see the robot in action for yourself.

This video shows Quanser's 2 DOF Serial Robot mimicking an industrial robot quickly
and repeatedly executing predefined trajectories.

“The first video mimics an industrial robot repeatedly executing predefined trajectories quickly and accurately, similar to placing chips on a circuit board," says Dr. Mascaro. "The faster the robot can place the chip while maintaining specified accuracy, the more the factory can increase their throughput.”

This video shows a master-slave teleoperation aimed at achieving the
precision required in surgery.

"The second video relates to surgical robots and shows a master-slave teleoperation aimed at achieving the precision required in surgery. Using a master - slave pair of robots, a doctor can manipulate the master robot using large scale motions, while the slave robot mimics the motions of the master on a smaller and more precise scale in order to perform the surgical operation, filtering out any vibrations or tremors from the doctor's motion. The forces experienced by the slave can be amplified and fed back to the master so the doctor can feel an enhanced version of what the slave robot is feeling.”



This video shows two robots using infrared sensors to interact as leader-follower.
In the real world, such an interaction would allow leader-follower robots
to travel over uncertain terrain.

“The third video applies to field robotics, in which two robots use infrared sensors to interact as leader-follower and travel together over uncertain terrain." Dr. Mascaro continues: "The slave robot must be capable of following its own trajectory, but should adjust its trajectory based on its relative distance from the master robot. Applications for this robot include any sort of sensing and detection in a difficult terrain or an inhospitable environment.”

Dr. Mascaro is pleased with what his robot control lab, with the new 2DOF Serial Robot, can offer his students. "We have a modern robotics lab that can provide all our students plenty of hands-on time with the robots," he says, "so they can more easily turn control theory into practice. As a result, my students are better prepared to tackle real-world applications and research in the future.”

If you have some innovative ideas to make your lab more engaging and relevant to the real world, tell us what you have in mind. Perhaps Quanser can help make it a reality.

Quanser to Sponsor Student Award at University of Waterloo 2012 Mechatronics Design Symposium

Quanser, a global leader in educational laboratory solutions for controls, mechatronics and robotics courses, is sponsoring the top prize at the University of Waterloo’s 2012 Mechatronics Design Symposium. The Design Symposium is a student competition and a project showcase for final year students in UofW’s Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Program.

Joining the panel of judges are Dr. Amin Abdossalami, Control Systems Engineer at Quanser and Dr. Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer and a three-time alumnus of the Waterloo Mechanical Engineering program. Quanser will award a cash prize to recognize the most innovative student project. Judging criteria includes display of exceptional technical achievement in the conception, design and prototyping of innovative mechatronic systems, as well as commercialization potential. Dr. Lee will present the award on Quanser’s behalf. “I’m looking forward to the Design Symposium with great anticipation because the best of today’s engineering students are remarkably sophisticated, and I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with.”

Quanser’s sponsorship of the student award reflects its commitment to enriching and enlivening engineering education, not only by designing hands-on educational solutions but also through support of student competitions and showcases. “Our company’s core principles all focus on helping engineering students learn more deeply,” says Dr. Lee.

The Design Symposium will take place on Monday, March 19th, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Main Hall of the Davis Center Library on the University of Waterloo campus in Waterloo, Ontario.

Twenty-four exhibits will be on display within such categories as Robotics, Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Biomedical Applications, Reconfigurable Service Systems, and Sports, Entertainment and Virtual Reality. The event is open to the public. If you cannot attend, just check our blog later - we will bring more details from the event.