Using IR Cameras Beyond Outreach: Motivational Projects for Engineering Students

Affordable infrared (IR) cameras provide a unique opportunity to motivate and enhance the education of engineering students. We used both IR and visible images from a FLIR E60 camera as an instructional vehicle in a digital image processing course, where students came from several engineering majors. These IR and visible images were used as the basis for an open-ended final project in the course. Assessment via both pre- and post-project questionnaires showed the project was a positive experience for the students, and helped motivate them to learn the material. This paper discusses the course, the camera, the project, and how effective it was to add this project to the course

Teaching differently: The digital signal processing of multimedia content through the use of liberal arts

Generally, the curriculum design for undergraduate students enrolled in digital signal processing (DSP)-related engineering programs covers hard topics from specific disciplines, namely, mathematics, digital electronics, or programming. Typically, these topics are very demanding from the point of view of both students and teachers due to the inherent complexity of the mathematical formulations. However, improvements to the effectiveness of teaching can be achieved through a multisensorial approach supported by the liberal arts. By including the development of art and literacy skills in the curriculum design, the fundamentals of DSP topics may be taught from a qualitative perspective, compared to the solely analytical standpoint taken by traditional curricula. We postulate that this approach increases both the comprehension and memorization of abstract concepts by stimulating students' creativity and curiosity. In this article, we elaborate upon a methodology that incorporates liberal arts concepts into the teaching of signal processing techniques. We also illustrate the application of this methodology through specific classroom activities related to the digital processing of multimedia contents in undergraduate academic programmes. With this proposal, we also aim to lessen the perceived difficulty of the topic, stimulate critical thinking, and establish a framework within which nonengineering departments may contribute to the teaching of engineering subjects.This research is part of the 17th Call to Support Experiences on Innovative Teaching at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain, in 2019-2020 and partially funded by the Spanish Government-MinECo project TEC2017-84395-P. This project gathered members from UC3M, the Havana University of Technology, José Antonio Echeverría, Cuba, and Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

First Steps into Practical Engineering for Freshman Students Using MATLAB and LEGO Mindstorms Robots

Besides lectures on basic theoretical topics, contemporary teaching and learning concepts for first semester students give more and more consideration to practically motivated courses. In this context, a new first-year introductory course in practical engineering has been established in the first semester curriculum of Electrical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Based on a threefold learning concept, programming skills in MATLAB are taught to 309 students within a full-time block course laboratory. The students are encouraged to transfer known mathematical basics to program algorithms and real-world applications performed by 100 LEGO Mindstorms robots. A new MATLAB toolbox and twofold project tasks have been developed for this purpose by a small team of supervisors. The students are supervised by over 60 tutors at 23 institutes, and are encouraged to create their own robotics applications. We describe how the laboratory motivates the students to act and think like engineers and to solve real-world issues with limited resources. The evaluation results show that the proposed practical course concept successfully boosts students’ motivation, advances their programming skills, and encourages the peer learning process.

Planning and Assessment of a Workshop on Undergraduate Education in Biometric Systems

Biometrics is the science of recognizing and authenticating people using their physiological features. Border and immigration control, restricted access to facilities and information systems, cybersecurity, crime investigations and forensic analysis are just a few of the primary application areas of biometrics used by commercial, government and law enforcement agencies. The global biometrics market has a compound annual growth rate of 21.3 percent. There is much research interest in different biometric systems and this has led to increasing efforts in ensuring that biometrics is taught at the undergraduate level. The authors are in the final year of an NSF TUES Type 2 grant that is based on the theme of vertically integrating biometrics experiments throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Three universities have joined together in this effort. This paper is about the planning and assessment of a 3 day workshop that is based on the NSF funded effort. Fifteen faculty from across the country participated in this workshop. Undergraduate and graduate students also attended. The key points of the workshop included invited lectures and hands-on laboratory activities. The invited lectures included a tutorial on biometrics, detailed lectures on speaker recognition and a lecture on how to assess an educational intervention. The hands-on activities were presented such that the attending faculty could take them back to their respective universities. They were based on the following learning outcomes: • Enhanced application of math skills • Enhanced software implementation skills • Enhanced interest in biometrics • Enhanced ability to analyze experimental results • Enhanced communication skills • Comprehension of the importance of vertical integration, in that students realize that their experiences are part of a flow that contributes to a unified knowledge base. The workshop assessment results are very positive with respect to organization, quality of the invited lectures, quality of the hands-on activities and the social program

The Use of Scilab-Cloud for Teaching Digital Signal Processing Concepts in Electrical Engineering Curricula

The digital signal processing (DSP) is a relevant area in the electrical/computer engineering field, since several applications have been observed during the past decades. On the other hand, students have demonstrated difficulties to understand not only the eventual applications, but also its mathematical concepts and theory. Actually, open source packages are available and increasing, but the use of these tools are not very widespread in electrical engineering curriculum. This paper presents the use of Scilab-Cloud software platform for teaching some fundamentals of digital signal processing in undergraduate level, particularly for electrical engineering curriculum. Therefore, some experiments have carried out with undergraduate electrical engineering students and a questionnaire answered by them evidenced the potential of Scilab-Cloud as an interesting alternative tool to foster and motivate students for learning DSP skills

Using Student Knowledge of Linear Systems Theory to Facilitate the Learning of Optical Engineering

For students learning a new topic, being able to use existing knowledge and mental models in the context of the new topic leads to faster learning and a deeper understanding of the new concepts. This paper describes how teaching a graduate-level course providing an introduction to optical engineering for students from multiple engineering majors can be facilitated by using existing concepts and knowledge of linear systems theory, which are common to them all

Audio Processing and Loudness Estimation Algorithms with iOS Simulations

abstract: The processing power and storage capacity of portable devices have improved considerably over the past decade. This has motivated the implementation of sophisticated audio and other signal processing algorithms on such mobile devices. Of particular interest in this thesis is audio/speech processing based on perceptual criteria. Specifically, estimation of parameters from human auditory models, such as auditory patterns and loudness, involves computationally intensive operations which can strain device resources. Hence, strategies for implementing computationally efficient human auditory models for loudness estimation have been studied in this thesis. Existing algorithms for reducing computations in auditory pattern and loudness estimation have been examined and improved algorithms have been proposed to overcome limitations of these methods. In addition, real-time applications such as perceptual loudness estimation and loudness equalization using auditory models have also been implemented. A software implementation of loudness estimation on iOS devices is also reported in this thesis. In addition to the loudness estimation algorithms and software, in this thesis project we also created new illustrations of speech and audio processing concepts for research and education. As a result, a new suite of speech/audio DSP functions was developed and integrated as part of the award-winning educational iOS App 'iJDSP." These functions are described in detail in this thesis. Several enhancements in the architecture of the application have also been introduced for providing the supporting framework for speech/audio processing. Frame-by-frame processing and visualization functionalities have been developed to facilitate speech/audio processing. In addition, facilities for easy sound recording, processing and audio rendering have also been developed to provide students, practitioners and researchers with an enriched DSP simulation tool. Simulations and assessments have been also developed for use in classes and training of practitioners and students.Dissertation/ThesisM.S. Electrical Engineering 201