CS/EE/ME 75
Introduction to Multi-Disciplinary
Systems Engineering
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Richard M. Murray |
|
Ben Brantley |
Joel Burdick |
Pietro Perona |
Lars Cremean |
Kristo Kriechbaum |
Sam Pfister |
2004-05
Course description
Catalog
description. This course presents the fundamentals of modern multi-disciplinary
systems engineering in the context of a substantial design project. Students
from a variety of disciplines will conceive, design, implement, and operate
a system involving electrical, information, and mechanical engineering components.
Specific tools will be provided for setting project goals and objectives, managing
interfaces between component subsystems, working in design teams, and tracking
progress against tasks. Students will be expected to apply knowledge from other
courses at Caltech in designing and implementing specific subsystems. During
the first two terms of the course, students will attend project meetings and
learn some basic tools for project design, while taking courses in CS, EE, and
ME that are related to the course project. During the third term, the entire
team will build, document, and demonstrate the course design project, which
will differ from year to year.
The third term of the course may be used to satisfy specific graduation requirements
in the CS, EE, and ME options and may be taken for up to 18 units of total credit,
with permission of the instructors. Freshman must receive permission from the
instructor to enroll.
Course structure. CS/EE/ME 75 is designed to be integrated with the
curriculum in the individual engineering disciplines. This is accomplished by
linking the activities in the first two terms with regular classes in CS, EE
and ME. These courses are used to design subsystems for the overall project,
with the system integration occuring in the third term and the final implementation
and operation occuring over the summer.
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Fall courses
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Winter courses
- CDS 110b - Control Systems
- ME/CS 132 - Motion Planning
- CS 11 - Embedded Programming
- CDS 190 - Modeling and Simulation
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Grading. In the first two terms, the course grade will be equally weighted
between course homework sets (one each for the first three weeks), course participation
in project and team meetings, and the final project presentation. For the third
term, the course grade will be based on the following factors:
-
Homework (20%): Homework sets will be handed out weekly for the
first five weeks of the class. Most sets will consist of some work that
is done by the student's team, as well as a (short) individual portion
-
Team project reviews (20%): Each team will be required to present
a review to an outside review team the end of the term. Each
student on the team should give a portion of at least one of the presentations.
-
Project documentation (40%): All work performed as part of the class should
be documented in an appropriate format (to be decided by the teams). Each
individual will turn in the documentation for the items they are responsible
by the end of the term.
- Participation (20%): Students are expected to attend project and team meetings and to participate in a constructive manner toward the over goals of the team. Team coordinators and instructors will provide assessments for each student based on the level and quality of participation in project activities.
Course Schedule
Project and team meetings. The course will have weekly project meetings
on Mondays from 7-8 pm (time may change based on availability of students taking the course). Attendance is mandatory. In addition, each student
will be assigned to a team which will have a weekly, 1 hour team meeting. All
students must also submit weekly progress reports and attend at least one field
test per term.
Fall term schedule. The project meetings during the first half of the
first term will be used to introduce the project management tools that will
be used throughout the project. In the second half of the course, teams will
report on their progress using these tools.
Winter term schedule. The goal of the winter term is to prepare for
the preliminary design review (PDR), to be held in the final week of the term.
The project meetings in the first half of the course will be used to introduce
key concepts that will be used at the PDR, with peer reviews for each team in
the second half. The culmination of the term will be a preliminary design review
by an outside review team.
Spring term schedule. In the spring term, the integrated design, construction,
and documentation of the system will be completed. Activities will be organized
into teams according to the system architecture and each team will prepare a
set of goals and objectives linked to the project goal. Weekly project meetings,
team meetings, and progress reports will be used to track progress. A critical
design review by outside experts at the end of the term will be used as a gate
for the activities to be pursued over the summer.
Project
This year's project is the development of an autonomous vehicle capable of
participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge, scheduled 8 October 2005.
The DARPA Grand Challenge is an autonomous vehicle race across the Mojave Desert, with a distance of up to 175 miles. The vehicle that completes the route
in the shortest time under 10 hours wins the $2M grand prize.
Caltech's first entry
in the DARPA Grand Challenge consisted of a heavily modified 1996 Chevy Tahoe
named "Bob" (right). Bob is fully automated, including electronically
controlled steering, throttle, brakes, transmission, and ignition. Its sensing
systems included 4 black and white firewire cameras sampling at 30 Hz (arranged
in two stero pairs), 1 color firewire camera, 2 LADAR (laser radar) units scanning
at 10 Hz, and a GPS/IMU package capable of providing full position and orientation
at 400 Hz time resolution. Computational resources included 8 high speed desktop
computers connected together through a 1 Gbs ethernet switch.
For 2005, students in CS/EE/ME 75 will design, build, and document a second
generation vehicle capable of winning the grand challenge. The vehicle must
be capable of operating in rough, desert conditions for 10 hours, at speeds
of up to 40 miles per hour. This will require a level of sophistication in planning
algorithms, driving software, and mechanical systems substantially beyond Bob's
current capabilities.
All students must sign up as a member of one of four primary teams that will design and build the race vehicle. The available teams are
- Vehicle - responsible for the vehicle hardware, including the gimballed sensor platform
- Embedded - responsible for computer hardware and software infrastructure, including device drivers and message transfer architecture
- Planning - responsible for determining the vehicle's motion, based on information about the course and the current environment/terrain
- Terrain - responsible for sensing the environment and building a representation of the terrain surrounding the vehicle that can be used for planning purposes
In addition to the primary team, students may participate in one more more secondary teams: documentation (determine and maintain the project documentation infrastructure), modeling and visualization (offline models and data visualization), system administration. More information is included in the information presentation.
Resources
Richard Murray, Caltech
Last update:
06-Apr-2005