Teaching Engineering Through Lego

By Luke Redfern (EM) 04/06/2014

Background

• Week 1 introductory exercise for first-year students.

• Task: Design and build an integrated system with Lego Mindstorms and Matlab.

Source: http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/IALego/

Motivation

• Problem: Some teams produce sub-standard models.

• Solution: Add to the existing example models.

– Models must address engineering problems.

– Comprehensive documentation is needed.

2013 ARM prize winner: Elevator emergency brake

The Beguiling Bender

The Dexterous Domino Layer

The Twitchy Trailer

The Hovering Helicopter

Conclusions

• Success will be gauged in subsequent Lego exercises

• Beyond CUED

– Education

– Industry

• Further work