Pedagogical Research and Issues

Development and Assessment of an Introductory Robotics Course to Adapt Industry 4.0 to Manufacturing and Automation Engineering Technology Programs

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Abstract

This paper presents a course development and its assessment for an introduction to robotics course for a manufacturing engineering technology program to echo the trend of Industry 4.0.  The course was developed from scratch starting with a grant proposal, and then fund-seeking for hardware and software, until the course was fully developed. During the four years, the faculty explored different formats of curriculum revision by integrating small-segment robotics modules into a variety of existing courses. Culminating into an Industrial Robotics course that is fully dedicated to robotics including robot programming, operations, and software simulation enhanced with hands-on projects in a teamwork fashion. To determine the effectiveness of teaching and learning a student survey was used that indicated students preferred the projects, no matter if they were as easy as calibrations or as complicated as conditioning logic programming; all projects appeared helpful to simulate students’ learning interest and build up their confidence and competence required in an Industry 4.0 environment. The course development and project-based teaching for robotics may be replicated by other institutions that may be teaching Industry 4.0 techniques. In the future, more robotics projects will be incorporated into the course like welding, gluing, material handling, etc.

Keywords: Robotics, curriculum development, Industry 4.0, curriculum development, Industry 4.0

How to Cite:

Zhang, J., Revuru, R. S. & Riedle, L., (2025) “Development and Assessment of an Introductory Robotics Course to Adapt Industry 4.0 to Manufacturing and Automation Engineering Technology Programs ”, The Journal of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering 1(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/jtmae.17932