Aims

To develop the students’ planning, design, construction and communication skills through teamwork in a design based project

To provide students with the skills to understand the planning and management of technical projects, an appreciation of business organisation and planning, and the opportunity to practice these. To assist students with project activities within their undergraduate studies and to enable them to fulfil their roles as future engineering managers. To provide insight into issues of ethical and sustainable design.

Outline Of Syllabus

The group design and construction project within this module allows student to experience engineering project planning, demonstrate and develop teamworking and practical skills, and to create and present documentation to an appropriate engineering standard. The practical skills are developed via the design, construction, and testing of electronic subsystems for sensing and control, and the creation of programming code. System integration, fault finding, and performance optimisation will also be developed.

In addition to the project work, the business part of the module introduces key concepts in exploring, designing, and validating potential solutions to contemporary challenges which could be addressed using autonomous movement. Working within their teams, students will identify and describe an existing problem faced by a discrete stakeholder, using this knowledge of the “market” to scope a potential solution or “product” to articulate the concept of product-market fit through a value proposition. Potential solutions will be validated through primary research. Students will then present their results in a group business report.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures provide basic material and guidance. Most of the work is self-directed by the students with guidance from academic supervisors. Project work forms the major element of the module which is conducted in the school’s laboratories.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The module is entirely in-course assessed, requiring the students to work in groups.

The main aim of the engineering design is to build a prototype system for an autonomous electronic Buggy. The design tasks are systematically partitioned as three individual subsystems. Each student leads one of these subsystem designs, which is assessed based on the planning, communication, building, and troubleshooting capabilities. The subsystems and overall system demonstration allows for assessment of their design and practical skills, covering knowledge outcomes 1 (M1, M2, M3, M6, M12, M13) and 3 (M16), and skill outcomes 1-4 (M16, M17), (M1, M4), (M1, M2, M6, M12, M13), and (M3, M12, M13) respectively.
Writing skills are assessed in the project thesis which is generated as part of the module. This covers knowledge outcome 3 (M4, M17), and skill outcomes 1-2 (M16, M17) and (M1, M4) respectively.


The module also consists of business and entrepreneurial aspects, where students prepare a business case detailing an innovative solution to a contemporary challenge. The coursework gives the students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of market research, business organisation, their teamwork, and entrepreneurial skills. The group business report allows for the assessment of their innovation skills, covering skills outcomes 5-9 (M5, M7, M8, M9 and M17) and learning outcomes 4-7 (M5, M7,M15, M16 and M17)