Hardware Prototyping Capability for a Community Service Projects Course in Electrical and Computer Engineering

在社区服务工程项目(EPICS)计划中，电气和计算机工程专业的学生通过长期团队项目为当地社区服务机构解决基于技术的问题而获得学分。每个项目团队由大二、大三和大四的学生组成，每个学生可以参与一个史诗项目，最长可达3年。这种结构提供了进行长期工程设计项目所需的连续性，这些项目可以对社区产生重大影响。该计划正在建立一个硬件原型设施。它的目标是使学生团队能够全面实施和测试他们的设计。因此，学生可以体验工程项目的所有阶段，从与社区服务机构合作伙伴的项目定义会议，到系统设计，再到系统原型的构建和评估。在原型证明其对社区的价值后，从私人来源筹集的资金将用于生产永久部署的系统。目前和即将增加的五个EPICS项目涉及许多技术：计算机网络、数字电子、分布式数据库、机电系统、能源管理系统、人机界面、电力电子、太阳能、语音处理和无线通信。该设备支持涉及这些技术的任意组合的硬件原型工作。这种全尺寸硬件原型能力的增加对EPICS计划的继续发展至关重要。它使EPICS项目成为如何向工程学本科生传授社区意识、沟通技能、团队合作、系统设计技能和项目管理技能的杰出典范。

In the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program, Electrical and Computer Engineering students earn academic credit for long-term team projects that solve technology-based problems for local community service agencies. Each project team is a mix of sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and each student may participate in an EPICS project for up to 3 years. This structure provides the continuity required to carry out long-term engineering design projects that can have a significant impact on the community. The program is establishing a hardware prototyping facility. Its goal is to enable the student teams to fully implement and test their designs. The students thus experience all phases of an engineering project, from project-definition meetings with their community service agency partner, through system design, to construction and evaluation of a system prototype. After a prototype has proven its value to the community, funds raised from private sources are used to produce the systems deployed on a permanent basis. The five current EPICS projects and those to be added involve many technologies: computer networks, digital electronics, distributed databases, electromechanical systems, energy management systems, human-computer interfaces, power electronics, solar power, speech processing, and wireless communications. The equipment supports hardware prototyping efforts involving any combination of these technologies. The addition of this full-scale hardware prototyping capability is crucial to the continued development of the EPICS program. It enables the EPICS program to become an outstanding model of how community awareness, communication skills, teamwork, system design skills, and project management skills can be taught to undergraduates in engineering.