Undergraduate research in robotics and automation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This paper describes a new course, Undergraduate Research in Robotics and Automation, developed by the author in the Department of General Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This course is intended to give undergraduate engineering students an exposure to the university research process that forms such a substantial part of the lives of their professors and graduate teaching assistants but which has been largely inaccessible and poorly understood by undergraduates. The course is built around the College of Engineering Robotics and Automation Laboratory. Several case studies are discussed from the initial offerings of the course.