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Cyber-physical systems are a genre of networked real-time systems that monitor and control the physical world. Examples include unmanned aerial vehicles and industrial robotics. The experts who develop these complex systems are retiring much faster than universities are graduating engineering majors. As a result, it is important for undergraduates to gain exposure to these kinds of complex systems. This paper describes upbot, a robotics testbed hosted at the University of Portland, Portland, OR. The testbed features an extensible robot built from an iRobot Create chassis and a computationally powerful embedded system equipped with a wireless card. In the Spring 2012 semester, the testbed was used for a course project designed and assessed in the style of contract learning. Overall, students were enthusiastic about the hands-on and self-paced nature of the course, but some were concerned by the level of freedom. The lessons learned may inform other educators in project design in robotics education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The course of Electric Machinery has been one of the core courses in the Electrical Engineering (EE) curriculum at Texas A&M University—Kingsville (TAMUK). In the past, the course was designed to focus mainly on topics of transformers and electric machines and was typically presented under the assumption of steady-state conditions. Unfortunately, many students considered the course old-fashioned and unexciting, and this lack of interest, in turn, seriously limited their ability to understand and appreciate the wide-ranging applications of electric machines. More important, electric machines today have become widely integrated with power electronics, digital signal processing (DSP), and digital control technology. However, these technological changes were not adequately reflected in the traditional teaching structure of the course. This paper presents a new approach that, by integrating computer-assisted teaching methodology in classroom presentation, substantially restructures the course so that it provides a comprehensive treatment of electric-drive systems with discussions covering electric machines, power electronic converters, feedback controls, power supply systems, and mechanical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]