This project requires teams of about 4-6 students to design, plan, construct and test a mechatronic system. The design is of such a complexity that only as a team can the technical challenges be managed. Teams must integrate aspects of engineering that have previously been taught in a wide range of courses.

Weekly meetings with course co-ordinator to: introduce the projects and on their novel engineering aspects; regularly interact with the project teams; have the teams carry out interim (formative) and final (formative & summative) presentations of their work; give feedback on interim and final presentations.

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30% Report: Final team report with notes from individuals on their part of the design

60% Project Output (Other than dissertation): Extent to which the final product meets the specifications and the quality of the demonstration of the prototypes (50%), confidential peer review to assess individual's contribution to overall success and quality of logbook, including reflective assessment describing individual's contribution (10%)

10% Oral Assessment & Presentation: Team presentation including demonstration of final product

This project aims to:

■ accumulate experience of working in a team focussed on delivering specific objectives and requiring to design, plan, implement and test a challenging technical project;

■ develop technical skills such as software writing, hardware design, construction and testing;

■ make practical use of management and project planning skills;

■ engage in a technically significant project which will require the full team in order to complete in time;

■ work to a design brief and deliver a product which meets challenging specifications within a budget.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ plan the management of a team project;

■ appreciate the value of project management as a tool to deliver results on time and to specification;

■ display initiative in running a project without undue reliance on supervision, for either organisational or technical advice;

■ perform productively in a team, integrating contributions with other team members;

■ keep a personal logbook as a record of technical work;

■ present work in both written report and oral presentation;

■ review a specification, deducing the main functional blocks needed and key technical challenges in building each block;

■ design simple and structured circuits and systems, that can be easily built and tested, and construct and test these circuits and systems;

■ evaluate the performance of systems, and subsystems against the specification, recognise divergence, and perform system modifications and, where appropriate, modifications to the specification;

■ iterate a design from start to finish, including risk evaluation, so that the outcome is a working product.