The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Piloting robotic education to new levels

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 20, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Piloting robotic education to new levels

The content should be industry driven. Academicians should keep in mind the needs of the industry/customer. "Who are you preparing the students for ... " is something that the university should keep asking.

Undergraduate programmes in applied areas such as robotics need to focus more on the dynamic needs of industry/customers. Their content should be industry-driven, says James Devaprasad, Chair, Manufacturing Engineering technology at the Lake Superior State University, Michigan, United States. The 44-year-old product of College of Engineering-Guindy (1983 batch) explains to K. Ramachandran how his university has been able to lead robotics education in Michigan, the level of industry involvement in course content and what it means to do a robotics degree programme.

He has his own definition of robotics: it is a system designed to do day-to-day work that is repetitive, practical and mundane.

"At LSSU, a student can choose to specialise in robotics while completing a bachelors degree in computer engineering, electrical, mechanical or manufacturing engineering branches. It is one of the three universities in the U.S. with this specialisation at the UG level," says Prof. Devaprasad.

He stresses on why the applied course gives priority to customer orientation. Academicians should drive university courses but they should keep in mind the industry/customer. "Who are you preparing the students for ... " is something that that the university should keep asking.

"At LSSU, we see the need to prepare practical engineers who will solve problems and take a design concept to reality," Prof. Devaprasad adds.

His university has an industry advisory board with about 25 industry members, representing different sectors, such as computer engineering, manufacturing, aerospace industry interests, men and women, the old and the young, alumni and outside graduates ... the idea is to have a balanced content which can be fine tuned regularly to suit industry needs.

"But then we are also careful that students are not prepared for one type of industry alone."

The LSSU programme asks students even from freshman (first) year to orient themselves to engineering design. In the first year, the students learn concepts of design.

The students use simple products such as paper or cardboard or clips to come up with innovative design and build a device. They also need to document their work, predict the outcomes and why the device is designed one way ...

Now the department wants to introduce improved computer simulation techniques so that the design is not very idealistic but will work in a given scenario.

The course is layered in a manner by which students learn the basics of mathematics, physics, chemistry, computers, graphic design, communication skills (they need to explain clearly what they want to do) and programme (for structured logic).

At the second layer they learn basics of mechanical engineering, electrical, computer or manufacturing engineering, application, fabrication, prototyping, simulation, and marketing.

Once the students understand the basic dynamism of a system, then they learn things like kinematics, control systems, sensors, and artificial intelligence.

On top of this, 25 per cent of the course is humanities and arts.

What does the course prepare the students for?

"Undergraduate education in engineering is always teaching people important skills that will help them continue their learning in industry. We know that real learning occurs in the industry."

On his views on the present engineering curriculum, Prof. Devaprasad says it seems the present Indian system is too heavy in theory.

Students learn a lot of things, but anything new added is on top of the load, adding to their academic burden.

"Only when I came to the US for post grad did I have time to realise what exactly I had learnt back at Chennai. Much of it was not useful in later life."

"Our industry advisory board helps us prioritise, how to take a new course, and how and which course can be shed to accommodate the new," Prof. Devaprasad says.

He can be reached at jdevaprasad@lssu.edu.

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