COEN/ELEC 390: Engineering Team Design Project
Course Outline for Fall 2012/13 [V090311]
Lectures on Wednesdays & Fridays 8:45 – 10:00 AM
Given by Nawwaf Kharma, Ph.D, P.Eng
Office Hours 10:30-12 Tuesdays
E-mail me at kharma@ece.concordia.ca briefly whenever appropriate
Course Objectives
The course offers students knowledge and experience in team-based design and
implementation, as well as documentation and presentation of a robot prototype. The course
has two main aspects to it: lectures and classroom activities as well as technical design,
implementation and testing work. Students, individually as in teams, are required to manage
their time intelligently in order to follow and fulfill the demands of both the theoretical and
practical parts of the course. Upon completion of the course, successful students should be
better able to:
(a) Design a solution for an initially unbound problem with a multidisciplinary nature,
following an iterative concurrent design process
(b) Implement design ideas and build realistic programmable robotic systems
(c) Survey the available resources for alternative solutions
(d) Complete a design project within a given time frame and budget
(e) Effectively select a correct set of components to fulfill a given design
(f) Execute basic testing & troubleshoot the different modules as well as the overall system
(g) Participate and possibly lead a small engineering team
(h) Gain confidence in applying technical abilities within a realistic setting
(i) Prepare and present written documentation (e.g. technical and user manuals)
(j) Prepare and present oral presentations to colleagues and managers
Course Textbook


Required textbook: Tools and Tactics of Design (paperback) by Peter G. Dominick et al.
Wiley, 1st edition (2000). ISBN: 0471386480.
Recommended guidebook: Guidelines to Professional Practice (freely available on-line)
by the OIQ, 1999. ISBN: 2980218618.
Course Homepage
The course has two on-line resources. The lecturer maintains a web-based directory at:
www.ece.concordia.ca/~kharma/coen390. Technical and other information are accessible
through Moodle at “My Concordia Portal”. Make sure you a VALID and ACTIVE e-mail address
at myConcordia.
1
Course Software
All necessary software packages, including (but not limited to) MS Office, AVR Studio,
PonyProg and C are available on the project room computers - the room that is dedicated to
COEN/ELEC 390. AVR Studio and C, and PonyProg are freeware and available on Internet.
Overall Outline
The course is designed around a series of lectures that unfold hand-in-hand with practical work
and written assignments, leading to the delivery (with full documentation) of a small robot. A
student should expect to:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
Attend and participate in the lectures
Attend the technical tutorials, hand-in the two group technical assignments
Submit five group assignments, complete and on-time
Attempt the final exam, which comes early and covers the whole book
As part of a team: build, test and iteratively perfect and document a robot
Make a group presentation towards the end of the course, about your robot
Submit the final design report plus manuals
The lectures are closely based on the textbook, and your understanding of the textbook through
reading and application (the assignments) will be tested in the final exam. The technical
assignments are for your benefit and they occur early to prepare you for the construction of the
robot. The robot is more than just hardware: it is the programmed hardware- working and well
documented. As such, the actual performance of your robot in the robot trials and competition
as well as the documentation matter most in this course. The final deliverable, which are
required a week after the competition, include a final design report and 2 manuals.
(a) Lectures
The lectures begin in the first week of term. They are closely based on the course textbook; they
may however include or use elements from other sources deemed to be of relevance to the
topics taught. Most lectures include an activity that is done by students in class. An assignment
on a given topic always follows the lectures on that topic.
(b) Tutorials and technical assignments
This course requires students to do quite a bit of work in the project room. In the first few weeks
of term, students are required to complete two directed small technical exercises, submitting a
technical assignment for each one. Students work in teams to complete these assignments,
which are submitted to, and marked by the Design Project Specialist.
(c) Assignments
At the start of the 3rd week of term, students are required to form formal teams of four (or
exceptionally 3) students each. Please note that all group deliverables, including the 5 written
assignments, are submitted on paper by the teams to the lecturer in the class room on the
2
assigned date (in the Timetable document). The purpose of these assignments is to provide
students with an opportunity to practice at length the ideas presented in the lectures and
textbook. Every team member should be capable of individually completing every assignment;
this capability may be tested in the early final exam. The assignments are described in the
Timetable document: late assignment submissions will not be accepted or marked.
Early Final Exam
Soon after the conclusion of the lectures, a final exam is given in-class. The exam is the only
individual exercise of the course. It covers the material of the lectures and the textbook. It
examines your intellectual and practical understanding of the topics covered. As such, the exam
requires minimal (if any) route memorization. The exam shall contain a few challenging
questions. The questions will be multiple choice questions, but that does not mean that they will
be easy to answer. This is a closed-book exam, but one two-sided hand-written (and not
photocopied) crib sheet produced by the examinee him/herself is allowed, and must be handed
with the answer booklet to the examiner.
Robot Competition
The highlight of the course is the robot competition, which is preceded by the robot trials. It may
extend over more than one day. The following initial and intentionally ambiguous description of
the project is presented to you by Mr. Dmitry Rozhdestvenskiy, the person in charge of the
technical content of the course (tutorials).
The general project task is to build a robot that performs a specific task. The details will be
released later in a separate document.
Proposal Presentation
Towards the end of the course and right before the robot competition, each group is expected to
present a slide-based talk about their final design, utilizing the multimedia equipment used by
the lecturer. The objective of the presentation is to convince the lecturer and technical
coordinator that the team understands the problem and have an effective and efficient solution,
which your team is likely to be able to realize, within the allowed time and budget. The duration
of a presentation must not exceed 12 minutes; feedback and grades will be provided at the end
of each presentation.
Final Design Report
Without the final design report, and technical and user manuals (CD/DVD and hard copies), the
robot prototype is in fact incomplete (the CD/DVD should contain an “anonymous” version of the
report and manuals with all personal information such as names, student IDs, etc. removed).
Though the ultimate purpose of the project is to team-design and construct a robot that reliably
performs the required task (and within realistic constraints), real engineering products always
require a lot of documentation, which allow for important activities such as: reproduction and
improvement, use and maintenance. For this reason, every team is required to hand in a
completely detailed and professional looking final design report, comprising of the elements
3
described in section 8.1.5 in the text book (front matter, text material and annex). Many, but not
all, of these elements would have been included in the written assignments (e.g. problem
statement in assignment 1). In addition, teams are required to hand in a technical manual, which
must provide all the information needed for anyone to perfectly construct and program your
robot. The other manual required is a user manual that provides clear instructions on the proper
means of using, maintaining and possible extension of, the robot.
Grading & Awards
The breakdown of the course grades follows.
(a) Technical and Theoretical Assignments. Two Technical and five Theoretical
Assignments make a total of 7 submissions. Each submission handed in on-time,
containing all required elements and meeting minimum standards of quality will receive a
full grade (1/1). A late submission or an incomplete one lacking any number of required
elements will automatically receive a 0 grade. A mark of 0.5 may occasionally be given
to submissions that have a few errors in content or are of sub-standard presentation
quality. The marks for all 7 submissions are summed-up for a total of X, which is used
according to the following formula to adjust the grade given to the Final Design Report
(+Manuals).
Adjusted Final Report Grade = [(X/7) x 0.5 + 0.5] x Final Design Report Grade
(b) Final Design Report. Together with the Robot Prototype, these submissions are the most
important deliverables in the course. It is critical that this report be complete, correct, and
clearly written, as well as professionally presented. The final design report is worth 30%
of the total mark of the course.
(c) Robot Competition. Robot trials come one week before the actual robot competition, and
they are worth 10%. In them, you are required to show that your robot satisfies its taskcost and time will not be taken into consideration. The robot will be run on the same
arena as the final competition, so it is a chance for you to uncover and fix any remaining
problems with your robot.
In the actual robot competition, which follows the trials, the robot will be evaluated for
performance (shortest time to complete the task) and cost. On the day of the robot
competition, each team must submit a spreadsheet showing the total cost (in C$) of all
material used in the construction of the robot. Each team will compete with the rest of
the class (i.e. team1 vs. team2, team3, team 4 …; team2 vs. team3, team 4, team5 …).
The time (in seconds) the robot takes to execute its assigned task will be calculated as
the average of three “clear win”1 best times. If a team does not score three clear wins,
the max allowed time will be used to fill in the gaps (i.e. if a team has 2 clear wins, the
time will be calculated: (win1_time+win2_time+max_time)/3).
The best team in each project gets Robot Performance Score = 1 (e.g. 100%). The
remaining teams’ scores will be scaled accordingly. This score will be multiplied by 15 to
1
Refer to the project description for the “clear win” definition.
4
give you up to 15% of the course grade. Another 10% will be assigned to the following
aspects of the project:



Hardware (originality, effectiveness and implementation)
Software (originality, effectiveness and implementation)
Team (communication, time management, work distribution, etc.)
First place winners in the robot competition will receive 5 extra marks and a certificate of
distinction; the second place winners will receive 3 extra marks; the third place will add 1
extra mark and a certificate of distinction! The places will be distributed based on the
number of clearly won rounds. If two teams come tight, the performance score will be
taken into consideration. Hence, Robot Competition mark = Robot Prototype mark + any
bonuses.
(d) Early Final Exam. The final exam is worth 30% of the course grade.
(e) Final Presentation. The final presentation is worth 5% of the course grade.
An important note on team work: Team solidarity is always important, but so is the performance
of individual members as team players. Hence, upon submission of the Final Design Report,
members of every team are required to confidentially submit overall peer evaluations (out of 10,
where 10 is best) of the performance of every member of their team, except themselves (the
form is on the course website). The average of these evaluations (Ave) will be used to adjust
the sum of the grades gained by an individual as a member of a group (call this sum: Group
Grade). Specifically, a Group Grade includes the marks for: Final Design Report (after
adjustment), Robot Trials & Competition and Final Presentation.
Adjusted Group Grade = [(Ave/10) x 0.5 + 0.5] x Group Grade
As an example, consider a formal team of four members {Al, Ba, Co, Di}, which submitted
evaluations for every member. Say member Ba has a Group Grade of 67/75 and member
evaluations of {(Al, 7) , (Co, 7.5) , (Di, 6.5)} with an average of 7. Thus, Ba’s Adjusted Group
Grade will be [ (7/10) x 0.5 + 0.5 ] x 67 ~ 57/75.
Finally, we present below a table that the instructor will use as a guide when deciding the final
mapping between total numerical grades and letter grades for individual students.
Table 1: Guideline Mapping between Total Numerical and Letter Grades
Letter Grade
Numerical Grade
Meaning
A+
A
AB+
B
B-
95 +
90 +
85 +
80 +
75 +
70 +
Outstanding Performance
Excellent Performance
Very Good Performance
Really Good Performance
Good Performance
Decent Performance
5
C+
C
CD+
D
DF
65 +
62 +
59 +
56 +
53 +
50 +
< 50
Acceptable Performance
Less than Acceptable Performance
Unacceptable Performance
Bad Performance
Very Bad Performance
Verging on Disastrous
Disastrous
Graduate Attributes
There is a different kind of evaluation that is carried out in this course, which has no impact
whatsoever on your grades, but which helps the teaching faculty assess how well the system is
doing in imparting certain “graduate attributes” to you, the students. In this course three
attributes will be partially assessed. Following is a list of attributes and particular indicators
(several per attribute) that will be assessed, together with an outline of how they’ll be measured.
(1) Individual & Team Work: your individual “practical/conceptual contribution” to team work
will equal your team’s peer evaluation. Your team’s ability at “delivering results” will be
reflected in the average of your final design report grade and the robot competition
grade. The engineer in charge (i.e., Dmitry) will assess two other indicators
(“cooperation & work ethics” as well as “initiative & leadership”) in his own way.
(2) Economics & Project Management: the value of your team’s “project planning &
implementation” indicator will equal your grade on the project planning assignment. Your
team’s “project control & performance evaluation” indicator will be measured using the
average of the grades of all written submissions (reflecting timeliness & quality).
(3) Life-long Learning: your team’s ability to “define and use the necessary knowledge” will
be assessed using your problem definition assignment. Your team’s “ability to use
norms” will be one of the criteria used to assess your final design report.
6