Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 2 Summer 2017 | Page 23

STORY & PHOTOS BY ROSAIRE BUSHEY
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Far left: Undergrad-
uate students work
with a desktop
robotic system.
UG lab gets students engaged with robotics
In an effort to get students’ minds fully en-
gaged in their learning, a mechanical engineer-
ing professor decided he needed to get their
hands fully engaged in their learning.
Associate Professor Pinhas Ben-Tzvi teaches
undergraduate classes in robotics and auto-
mation, specifically, ME4524 and ECE 4704 for
juniors and seniors. Citing a disconnect between
the academic theory of robotics systems and the
lack of a hands-on course that would allow stu-
dents to see how the theory worked in the real
world, Ben-Tzvi created a new lab with robotics
equipment to help students learn.
“Given the demands of academia and industry,
the land of a hands-on component was an issue
I felt needed to be addressed,” he said. “Starting
with the spring 2017 semester, we offered the
lab component during lecture time, and our next
step is to make it a stand-alone lab in conjunc-
tion with the class lectures.”
With a suite of mobile robots and robotic
manipulators worth more than $175,000 to
house, Ben-Tzvi acquired renovated space in
Ran dolph Hall where students can learn about
robot kinematics, dynamics, sensing, controls,
haptics, mobile robotics, mapping/localization,
computer vision, and path planning.
Even though the class is an elective class and
has prerequisites, Ben-Tzvi currently has about
50 students enrolled, and he believes it will
continue to grow.
“One of the most important hands-on skills
will be to hone the students’ ability to program
with Matlab and Simulink,” Ben-Tzvi said. “The
opportunity to use state-of-the-art equipment
will help our students deal with real program-
ming issues and robotics aspects of system
integration that they’ll come across in industry.
Programming is a key skills-set that allows engi-
neers to become problem-solvers, and students
really seem to like and appreciate the course.”
The hands-on portion of working with robots
and controllers also helps students in class lec-
tures, as they can compare the theoretical with
how it applies to the actual, which also helps
them retain more of what they learn, Ben-Tzvi
said.
“What makes someone good at their job is
their ability to use their knowledge on the fly be-
cause they understand and retain the concepts,”
Ben-Tzvi said. “The lab experience is what sets
up that ability to make those connections.”
MOMENTUM SUMMER'17
PAGE 23
Left: Associate
Professor Pinhas
Ben-Tzvi with one
of the more than
$175,000 worth of
robotics purchased
for the class.