Over the past few years, the teaching of industrial robotics associated with hands on practice has become an indispensable methodology for the subject. However, a majority of the robots applicable for the undergraduate or graduate levels are very expensive or have a closed hardware and software architecture. This restricts content exploration by the students in order to understand the matters related to robotics. In this article, an educational experience related to robotic education is described. It involves the design and development of an robot manipulator with four degrees of freedom. In addition, the activities in which the students participated during the execution of this work are presented. The robot developed could be an ideal platform for the research and teaching of robotics.

Robotics teachers can explore the multidisciplinary formation of the engineering student. The use of an appropriate learning methodology enables the development of transversal skills during this educational process. In this paper, we discuss a new experience with project-based learning involving the design and development of a low-cost robot manipulator with six degrees of freedom, to motivate undergraduate students in the Robotic Elements Course of Automation and Control Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, of Escola de Minas at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. Students carried out activities for two years, from 2012 to 2014. The key learning objectives and the project implementation tools are detailed. Evaluation results and the decrease of the dropping out of automation and control engineering show that this project was effective for students’ engagement and motivation.

This work proposes a new methodology for the detection of discontinuities in the weld bead applied in Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) processes. The detection system is based on two sensors—a microphone and piezoelectric—that acquire acoustic emissions generated during the welding. The feature vectors extracted from the sensor dataset are used to construct classifier models. The approaches based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers are able to identify with a high accuracy the three proposed weld bead classes: desirable weld bead, shrinkage cavity and burn through discontinuities. Experimental results illustrate the system’s high accuracy, greater than 90% for each class. A novel Hierarchical Support Vector Machine (HSVM) structure is proposed to make feasible the use of this system in industrial environments. This approach presented 96.6% overall accuracy. Given the simplicity of the equipment involved, this system can be applied in the metal transformation industries.

Nowadays, dropping out of engineering courses occurs in practically all universities of the world. Over the past few years, active learning has been recognized by the educational community as the most effective learning method. In this paper we discuss the educational experience involving the design and development of a low-cost robot manipulator with six degrees of freedom, to motivate undergraduate students of control and automation engineering and mechanical engineering, who attended the robotics elements subject in 2012 and 2013. Moreover, the students' activities during the execution of the work are presented as well as the results of their evaluation of the methodology proposed.

Nowadays, dropping out of engineering courses practically occurs in all universities of the world. Over the past few years, active learning has been recognized by the educational community as the most effective learning method, that involves direct, purposeful learning experiences, such as hands-on or field experiences. In this paper we will discuss the educational experience associated with the design and development of projects to motivate the students of Control and Automation Engineering and Electrical Engineering during a semester of Industrial Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing Systems courses. The key learning objectives and tools used to implement them and the evaluation results will be detailed. Our focus was to introduce how those multidisciplinary works could help the students increase their motivation and improve their professional skills such as problem solving, team work and leadership. Evaluation results show that those projects were effective in engaging the students and as well as an effective active learning tool.

On this work, a device was made in order to help the visualization by the student of a PID temperature control and thus fix the concepts learned in the classroom. This device was built primarily with a PIC18F4550 microcontroller, a mini cooler from a PC, a heat resistor, LM35 temperature sensors, liquid crystal display, USB connector, transistors, LEDs, potentiometers, resistors and capacitors. The USB connection is responsible for recording the microcontroller firmware (bootloader mode), for interfacing with a supervisory software, and to supply the system. The heat resistor provides heat to the system. On the other hand, the cooler has the function of removing heat from the system. The liquid crystal display helps the student to check the temperature, the constants of the controller (K p , K i and K d ) and the set point temperature or the cooler voltage. The potentiometers provide the option to run the system in open loop, that is, they serve to make the control of the heat supplied by the heat resistor and the cooler voltage manually. Both the heat resistor and the cooler are controlled via transistors switched by PWMs (Pulse Wide Modulation). A computer program was developed in C Sharp language to display the temperature over time measured by the sensors. The program also is used to adjust the constants K p , K i and K d of the controller and the temperature set point. The microcontroller firmware allows the system to operate in both open and closed loop modes. This work allows the student to learn in practice the control actions when the controller parameters are changed, contributing to improve the acknowledgment of Control Engineering.