Agenda for Monday July 16, 2007 0900 Welcome for the Day (BC/NG/HD and faculty)

1. Agenda for Monday July 16, 2007 0900 Welcome for the Day (BC/NG/HD and faculty) AIM for Stars overview (Neal) Lesson Idea List distribution (Neal) 0915 Bill and Jim’s Lesson Samples and Examples (Bill, Jim) 0945 Engineering Design Tools (HD) Objectives and Constraints Scheduling Technical Writing 1015 Breakout (Observations/Questions) (HD?) Is engineering for everyone in the 21st century? Who would be good at engineering? 1045 Break 1115 What teachers should know about the TekBot™ (HD) Sensors, Light, Force Sensors, Sound, Position 1200 Lunch 1300 Hands-On Assembly and Test of Analog Brain Board 1530 Adjourn (adjourn directly from labs)

2. Silicon Prairie Initiative on Robotics in Information Technology Engineering Design Tools

3. Heuristics • A heuristic is anything that provides a plausible aid or direction in the solution of a problem. • Heuristics are usually unjustified and potentially fallible. • Engineering design is the use of heuristics. • Heuristics are used to cause the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources.

4. Sample Engineering Heuristics • Rules of Thumb and Orders of Magnitude • Attitude-Determining Heuristics • Risk-Controlling Heuristics • Resource Allocation Heuristics • Miscellaneous Heuristics

5. Rules of Thumb • Ambient temperature 20 C • Air 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen • Forward biased diode voltage 0.7 V • LED 1.5V • One gram of uranium gives one mega-watt day of energy • Building construction scales as the price of meat • Screws have a point, bolts are flat

6. Attitude-Determining Heuristics • Quantify or express all variables in numbers • Always give an answer • Work at the margin of solvable problems

7. Risk-Controlling Heuristics • Make small changes from previous successful solutions. • Always give yourself a chance to retreat. • Use feedback to stabilize a design

8. Resource Allocation Heuristics • Allocate sufficient resources to the weak link. • Allocate resources as long as the cost of not knowing exceeds the cost of finding out. • At some point in the project, freeze the design.

9. Miscellaneous • Break complex problems into smaller, more manageable pieces. • Design for a specific time frame. • Always make the minimum decision.

10. Problem Definition 1. Clarify objectives 2. Establish user requirements 3. Identify constraints 4. Establish functions Client Statement (Need) Conceptual Design 5. Establish design specifications 6. Generate alternatives Design Process Preliminary Design 7. Model or analyze design 8. Test and evaluate design Detailed Design 9. Refine and optimize design Final Design (Fabrication Specs & Documentation) Design Communication 10. Document design

11. Convergent (left brain) and Divergent (right brain) Thinking

12. Methods Objective Tree Pairwise Comparison Chart Weighted Objectives Tree Function-Means Tree Functional Analysis Requirements Matrix Means Literature Review Brainstorming User Surveys and Questionnaires Structured Interviews Problem Definition

13. Building an Objectives Tree

14. Building an Objectives Tree

15. Functional Analysis • What does the design DO? • What functions must be performed to realize the objectives? • Put the language of the client and users into the language of the engineer. • Put things into terminology that helps to find ways to meet objectives. • Use terminology that can be used to measure how well the objectives have been met.

16. What are Functions? • A relationship between independent variables (inputs) and response or dependent variables. (outputs) • Mathematics: • Business Management Theory: Transformation function

17. Black and Glass Boxes • Like the mathematical and management models - relate the inputs to the outputs • All ins and outs must be specified • What happens to each input? • Where does the output come from? • Remove the cover to see what's going on inside. Black Box

18. Black Box of a Radio

19. Radio Glass Box(the cover has been removed)

20. Function-Means Tree • A graphical representation of the design's basic and secondary functions • Alternating levels of function and means • Begins the process of association of what must be done and how we might do it. • Can be used to separate and sort secondary functions associated with the design.

22. Heuristics • A heuristic is anything that provides a plausible aid or direction in the solution of a problem. • Heuristics are usually unjustified and potentially fallible. • Engineering design is the use of heuristics. • Heuristics are used to cause the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources.

23. Conceptual Design: Finding a Feasible Concept. • Break down the overall problem into subproblems. • Find solutions to each subproblem • Combine the subproblem solutions. • The aim is to start with the project definition and generate as many ways as possible of solving the problem. • Then select the most promising ideas that meet the design specification.

24. Methods Performance Specification Method Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Morphological Chart Means Brainstorming Synectics and Analogies Benchmarking Reverse Engineering (Dissection) Conceptual Design

25. Convergent (left brain) and Divergent (right brain) Thinking