Class Meeting Time

Tuesday & Thursday, 12:00-12:50, 256 CB. Business lecture.

Wednesday & Friday, 12:00-12:50, 343 MARB. Technical lecture.

Overview

In this class you will design, build, debug, and field robots that play soccer. This project is intended to be both fun and to stretch your technical abilities. Employers will be very interested in your ability to bring together different aspects of your engineering education. When you interview for jobs, you should not be surprised to find that most of your interview will be spent talking about your robot soccer design. This course is worth four credit hours. A good rule of thumb is that for every credit hour you should expect to spend three to four hours a week on the class. Therefore, you should expect to spend twelve to sixteen hours a week on this course. However, there will be relatively few assignments due during the course: you will need to manage your time carefully. This course will be different than other courses in that we will not hold your hand along the way and tell you everything that you should be doing. In the past, the most successful teams have been those who meet regularly and who consistently put 3-4 hours/week into the project (per person). Designing, building, and programming your robot will require effort and time. You can either distribute that time throughout the year, or you can spend the entire last month doing nothing else (not advised). Potential employers will be very interested in how you manage your time, so take that part seriously. We hope that this course will be one of your more rewarding experiences in the ECEn Department.

The following are the key learning objectives for EE 490:

• Complete a design project that requires the use of knowledge and skills acquired in during the undergraduate educational experience.
• Learn the basic business practices found in most industrial workplaces.
• Learn to function as part of an engineering team.
• Learn and practice written and oral presentation skills.
• Work within a design environment with simulated real-world design constraints.
• Be better prepared to transition into the workplace or graduate school.
• Have fun.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are one or more of the following:
ECEn 483 - classical control
ECEn 425 - real time programming
CS 470 - artificial intelligence

Class Email

To put your name on the class mailing list, send email (from the account(s) you wish to receive mail) to majordomo@ee.byu.edu and in the text of the message put subscribe soccer.

You should receive email informing you that you have been added to the class mailing address. You can then write email to the whole class by sending email to soccer@ee.byu.edu.