Objectives

This comprehensive course aims to:
* Foster entrepreneurship, invention, and innovation by enabling students to metamorphose their ideas to proof-of-concept systems for high-tech applications.
* Promote lab automation and intrapreneurship to facilitate rapid migration of ideas from the concept to product stage and increase the quality and productivity of research centers.
* Accelerate the internationalization of products using automated test systems for localized/tropicalized (adapted for the huge markets in countries with tropical climate) prototypes to ensure that they meet design constraints and performance requirements. The emphasis is on leapfrogging technologies for developing and underdeveloped communities.
* Create awareness of the commercialization process, i.e., the long winding road from an idea to a marketable product. A risk management perspective is employed.
* Improve student learning with hands-on experimentation.

There is a specific emphasis on intersectional innovation - melding concepts from various disciplines, knowledge systems, countries and cultures to create real value for the world. Design of products and services for marginalized customers is stressed (but not required).

The focus of the course is on product development & prototyping (as opposed to theoretical design)

The course covers some fundamental engineering concepts like instrumentation, control, signal conditioning, operating systems, etc on a just-in-time basis. There are no real pre-requisites for this class. However, it is a tough class and a time commitment of about 12 hours/week is required.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students should be able to:
* Identify processes and tasks in their research lab that can be automated and ideas stemming from their research that have market potential.
* Define product requirements and formulate specifications.
* Determine how to simultaneously meet system and physical design constraints and identify effective trade-offs to optimize system performance.
* Determine the hardware and software resources required to interface various kinds of sensors and actuators to a computer.
* Integrate small computer-based testing, measurement, and automation systems.
* Work in a team environment to develop innovative products/processes or optimize an existing product/process.
* Be aware of what it takes to advance their proof-of-concept system to a commercially marketable product.

Audience

This course is open to students from ALL disciplines across campus.

The following student groups might be specifically interested in this course:

- Faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate research assistants in various research centers across the University who want to explore ways to increase their throughput by automating their labs
- Entrepreneurship & Business students who want to learn system integration and implementation techniques to evaluate their innovative ideas
- Students working on various social entrepreneurial and global sustainability projects
- Students affiliated with various professional real-world project-oriented clubs like LionSat, Hybrid and Hydrogen vehicle Research Center, etc.
- Robotics and Home Automation enthusiasts