Prof. J. Edward Carryer
August 1994
The title of the course is Smart Product Design which reflects the emphasis on products. It has, none the less, proven very popular among the Manufacturing Systems Engineering students who see the applicability of the material to systems to manufacture products.
The focus of the course is on the use of microprocessors as components of machines, as opposed to computer control of machines. As such, the emphasis in the laboratory is on 8-bit microcomputers (currently the Motorola MC68HC11) that are embedded into the student projects. Other courses are available to teach closed loop control theory, so no attempt is made to teach that material within the course.
Prerequisites include a course in programming, preferably taught in a structured language, and a first course in circuit analysis.
The overall goal of the course is to produce engineers that are conversant in all of the non-mechanical engineering technologies necessary to complete a modern electro-mechanical product. The intent is to teach mechanical engineers enough about electronics and software that they will be able to be effective interdisciplinary team members and leaders. The philosophy is that the best way to learn the capabilities of the technology is to actually learn to apply it yourself.
Each of the courses in the sequence shares a common structure. There are fours hours of formal lecture time per week, a number of semi-structured laboratory assignments that varies from quarter to quarter, and an open ended design project in each of the quarters. The design projects vary from a two week project that does not employ a microprocessor in the first quarter to the third quarter project that is completed in teams of three, spans seven weeks and requires the use of multiple communicating microprocessors.