Partner courses

This course focuses on the methodology for formulating and solving realistic design problems drawn from civil and environmental engineering, characterized by incomplete specifications, open-ended solution space, and partial evaluations.

Students use TechSpark to fabricate and assemble their designs.

The big day! Students assemble their bridges.

Will they handle the weight!?

Mechatronics is the synergistic integration of mechanism, electronics, and computer control to achieve a functional system. This course is a semester-long multidisciplinary capstone hardware project design experience in which small (typically four-person) teams of electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and robotics students deliver an end-of-course demonstration of a final integrated system capable of performing a mechatronic task. Throughout the semester, the students design, configure, implement, test and evaluate in the laboratory devices and subsystems culminating in the final integrated mechatronic system. Lectures will complement the laboratory experience with comparative surveys, operational principles, and integrated design issues associated with the spectrum of mechanism, microcontroller, electronic, sensor, and control components.

This course is designed for students who have a background in mechatronics by having taken a mechatronics design course or through practice. The course will be a combination of laboratories and lectures and will culminate in a class project. The topics covered will be microcontroller hardware subsystems: timer systems, PWM, interrupts; analog circuits, operational amplifiers, comparators, signal conditioning, interfacing to sensors, actuator characteristics and interfacing; C language features for embedded software, register level programming, hardware abstraction layers, event driven programming, state machines, state charts.

This course focuses on addressing challenges in the field of haptics from an engineers perspective. We will begin by studying human haptic perception and an introduction into psychophysics. We will then study the design and control of haptic systems which provide touch feedback to a user. The class format will include lectures, discussion, paper presentations, laboratories and assignments using hardware that will be shipped to the students, and a class project. This class is designed to be a graduate/advanced undergraduate course and requires a background in dynamic systems, mechatronics, and basic programming. Mechanical prototyping, robotics, and feedback control knowledge are useful skills for this class but are not required.

This course introduces students to a broad scope of electrical and computer engineering. The objectives are to prepare students for the next tier of ECE core courses and to excite them about ECE. The course covers topics such as Data Processing, Data Transmission, and Data Storage. Specific coverage includes: electronic circuits basics, computer logic, CPU, von Neumann architecture, embedded systems, capacitor, inductor, amplifiers, analog filters, analog to digital conversion, digital filters, wireless communication, fiber communication, computer network, data center and storage technologies, modern cryptography, and machine learning. On each of these subjects, the course will focus on certain topics to give an appreciative depth and help students understand the essence of the subject. Lectures will be accompanied by labs, which may include hands-on building of circuits, embedded systems, and computer networks, and a machine learning lab.

The ECE Design Experience is a capstone design course that serves to introduce students to broad- based, practical engineering design and applications through an open-ended design problem. Students will work with a team on a project of their choosing (subject to instructor approval) throughout the semester culminating with a final project presentation, report, and public demonstration. The projects will need to encompass a minimum of two ECE areas. Throughout the semester, teams will need to give both written and oral project proposals and periodic performance updates. Team-building experiences designed to educate students on group dynamics, resource management, deadline planning, Big-picture implications of engineering applications: societal, human, ethical, and long-term impact will be explored. Please note that the full prerequisite list of All ECE Core Courses plus any two 18-xxx ECE Area Courses is too long to be put into the registration system. As a result ALL students will be waitlisted for 18-500. Students will be registered once it has been confirmed they have completed the prerequisites, after final grades for the current semester.

The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the field of mechanical engineering through an exposition of its disciplines, including structural analysis, mechanism design, fluid flows, and thermal systems. By using principles and methods of analysis developed in lectures, students will complete two major projects. These projects will begin with conceptualization, proceed with the analysis of candidate designs, and culminate in the construction and testing of a prototype. The creative process will be encouraged throughout. The course is intended primarily for CIT freshmen. 3 hrs. lec., 2 hrs. rec./lab.

This course guides students through the design process in the applied design of a practical mechanical system including emphasizing methods for innovation and tools for design analysis. Professional and ethical responsibilities of designers, interactions with clients and other professionals, regulatory aspects, and public responsibility are discussed. Student complete a team design project.

Students demonstrate their project from conceptualization and realization.

Project example from conceptualization and realization.

Students demonstrate their project from conceptualization and realization.

Project example from conceptualization and realization.

Project example from conceptualization and realization.

Students demonstrate their project from conceptualization and realization.

Students demonstrate their project from conceptualization and realization.

Project example from conceptualization and realization.

The traditional principles of mass production are being challenged by concepts of highly customized and personalized goods. A growing number of do-it-yourself (DIY) inventors, designers, makers, and entrepreneurs is accelerating this trend. This class offers students hands-on experiences of DIY product design and fabrication processes. Over the course of a semester, students work individually or in small groups to design a customized and personalized product of their own and build it using various DIY fabrication methods, including 3D laser scanning, 3D printing, laser cutting, vacuum forming, etc. Students develop multiple prototypes throughout the semester, iterating and refining their design.

A mini-motorcycle from DIY design and fabrication.

A student shares a project from DIY design and fabrication.

An example project from DIY design and fabrication.

A student demonstrates a project from DIY design and fabrication.

Students with their project from DIY design and fabrication.

A student with a project from DIY design and fabrication.

Example project from DIY design and fabrication.

An example project from DIY design and fabrication.

A student demonstrates a project from DIY design and fabrication.

A student demonstrates a project from DIY design and fabrication.

A student demonstrates a project from DIY design and fabrication.

Project example from DIY design and fabrication.

Project example from DIY design and fabrication.

Graduate students in the Advanced Mechanical Design course design, fabricate, and test high-performance mechanical components.

This team created an automatic s’mores maker.

Another group demonstrates its self-assembling origami furniture.

A smart automated spice rack was this team’s final project.

Another group developed a gantry system for item retrieval and storage.

Students in Rebecca Taylor’s course, Making Your Products at Scale, learn about materials, modern manufacturing practices, and more.

Engineering students take things apart in order to understand what makes them tick…in this case, quite literally.

This team dismantled a sewing machine to understand how its individual components were designed and manufactured to work together. Can they reassemble it?

Many individual pieces make up the products we use every day. A closer look helps students to appreciate manufacturing methods, assembly lines, packaging, and sustainability.

Spring odd years: The goal of this course is to enable the student to solve practical solidification processing problems through the application of solidification theory. The objectives of this course are to: (1) Develop solidification theory so that the student can understand predict solidification structure; (2) Develop a strong understanding of the role of heat transfer in castings; (3) Develop an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of casting processes. The first half of the course will be theoretical, covering nucleation, growth, instability, solidification microstructure: cells, dendrites, eutectic and peritectic structures, solute redistribution, inclusion formation and separation, defects and heat transfer problems. The second part of the course will be process oriented and will include conventional and near net shape casting, investment casting, rapid solidification and spray casting where the emphasis will be on process design to avoid defects.

This course sequence introduces Biomedical Engineering students to the design of useful biomedical products to meet a specific medical need. Students will learn to identify product needs, how to specify problem definitions and to use project management tools. Methods to develop creativity in design will be introduced. The course sequence is comprised of two parts: 42-401 is offered in the Fall semester and provides the students the opportunity to form project teams, select and define a project, create a development plan, and complete an initial prototype. 42-402 is offered in the Spring semester is a full semester course and completes the plan that was developed in the fall semester. This course culminates in the completion of multiple prototypes, a poster presentation, and a written report.