Vg 100 - Introduction to Engineering

In vg100 students will learn and experience how engineers conceptualize the world and create things that can profoundly alter people’s lives. In doing so, we find out that engineers bring much of their life and learning to bear on problem solving. It’s not just math. It’s not just science. The best of engineering often embraces one’s life and passion to share with others, to help those in need, to improve our quality of life, and to encourage our exploration into the unknown. Our treatment of engineering in this section is broad based, and it covers a variety of case studies across a number of engineering disciplines. In doing so, we will explore how even the simplest of engineering designs can have outrageous consequences. We will consider why technical expertise by itself does not guarantee success.

There will be two team-based projects involved in this course. In the first project, students will design and build a climbing robot. In the second project, students will design and build a "mechatronic system" to improves the quality of everyday life for people. 

 Today's Picture: Vg100 - Day 1!

Arduino is a microcontroller board used by many students for their VG100 projects. Arduino tutorials are available online at Arduino Tutorial.

Arduino website (you can download arduino driver from here) 

In addition to Dr. Dugnani and Dr. Welch-Bolen, vg100 can count on the most talented TA's available at the JI: Huang Jiannan, Cai Yusheng, and Yuyue Zhao

More details and regulations on the hovercraft competitions will follow soon

Vg100 students will have access to our laser cutting facilities for building their prototypes.  For any technical questions on laser cutting, laser cutting scheduling, and laser cutting regulation, please contact directly our TAs.

There are several different projects and considerations for the Summer 2013 term at JI.  Students are allowed to select a project based on the topics listed below.  In few exceptional cases, students will be allowed to choose a topic outside of the topic list below.  

• Entrepreneurship Project Series. Several teams will be able to pursue a design project with an entrepreneurial focus. This term’s theme for entrepreneurial projects is “Student Life,” in which designs involve improving the life of our peers. 

• Greater Good Project Series. Several teams will be able to pursue a design project with humanitarian focus. Projects with this focus have been well received in the communities that have asked for this kind of help. 

• LifeHacks DIY Project Series. Several teams will be able to pursue a design project with a Do-It-Yourself project with an Arduino. People who are new to engineering have used this very small and inexpensive microcontroller.  The tech makes for very cool stuff.