Systems Engineering Approach for a Robotic Project by Electrical and Electronics Engineering Students

This paper reports on a major student project that adopts the systems engineering approach to design and build the upper-half of a humanoid robot that senses the presence of an object directly in front of it and triggers a series of pre-programmed activities that involves a sequence of shoulder-elbow-wrist movements coupled with blinking eyes and voice messages.

Through this project, the students were given opportunity to perform product conception, production planning, cost estimation, trade-off evaluation, parts/materials selection and procurement, sub-systems design and integration, hardware-software interfacing, maintenance scheduling as well as time management. Self-motivation and team work are two major aspects of this project.

This group of eight students completed this university-financed project in 11 weeks. The final product was exhibited within our Engineering School and assessed by a team of lecturers. The students were gratify because this project provides them with valuable hands-on experience on top of precious opportunity to gain knowledge not covered in their undergraduate curriculum such as Programmable Logic Controller, pneumatics and metal fabrication.