This project requires teams of about 4-6 students to design, plan, construct and test a mechatronic system. The design is of such a complexity that only as a team can the technical challenges be managed. Teams must integrate aspects of engineering that have previously been taught in a wide range of courses.

Weekly meetings with course co-ordinator to: introduce the projects and on their novel engineering aspects; regularly interact with the project teams; have the teams carry out interim (formative) and final (formative & summative) presentations of their work; give feedback on interim and final presentations.

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30% Report: Final team report with notes from individuals on their part of the design

60% Project Output (Other than dissertation): Extent to which the final product meets the specifications and the quality of the demonstration of the prototypes (50%), confidential peer review to assess individual's contribution to overall success and quality of logbook, including reflective assessment describing individual's contribution (10%)

10% Oral Assessment & Presentation: Team presentation including demonstration of final product

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. For non Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

It is not practicable to offer reassessment in any aspect of this course, as each requires practical or group work.

This project aims to:

■ accumulate experience of working in a team focussed on delivering specific objectives and requiring to design, plan, implement and test a challenging technical project;

■ develop technical skills such as software writing, hardware design, construction and testing;

■ make practical use of management and project planning skills;

■ engage in a technically significant project which will require the full team in order to complete in time;

■ work to a design brief and deliver a product which meets challenging specifications within a budget.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ plan the management of a team project;

■ appreciate the value of project management as a tool to deliver results on time and to specification;

■ display initiative in running a project without undue reliance on supervision, for either organisational or technical advice;

■ perform productively in a team, integrating contributions with other team members;

■ keep a personal logbook as a record of technical work;

■ present work in both written report and oral presentation;

■ review a specification, deducing the main functional blocks needed and key technical challenges in building each block;

■ design simple and structured circuits and systems, that can be easily built and tested, and construct and test these circuits and systems;

■ evaluate the performance of systems, and subsystems against the specification, recognise divergence, and perform system modifications and, where appropriate, modifications to the specification;

■ iterate a design from start to finish so that the outcome is a working product.

Students must attend at least 90% of timetabled meetings with the supervisor, take part in all presentations, contribute to all team reports and must maintain and submit a log book and reflective report. Students who make insufficient practical contribution to the effort of the team will be refused credit.