Project-based learning of system-of-systems

Abstract

This paper reports on a hands-on project aimed at learning and experiencing the system-of-systems concept. The motivation behind this project is to provide an example for the creation of a mentor-based educational experience for engineering students learning design, analysis, and synthesis of multi-level systems. The goal of this project is to challenge the engineering students to develop an RF-based system capable of sensing, monitoring, communicating, and controlling a multi-vehicle system that is connected via a wireless network. It must be a fully integrated and complete system in which the vehicles that belong to a network can become aware of their location, communicate with nearby vehicles (sometimes with no visible line of sight), and be notified of the presence of different objects located in their immediate vicinity (obstacles, such as abundant vehicles). In addition, all the vehicles will be constantly monitored and communicated with a central location. Students have been working on multi-system development and understanding, including a hierarchical system (system of systems) integration. They have been learning how to deal with all system level components from a very low level (vehicle communication and control) to a very high level (vehicles location). They have been experiencing real-life implementation problems and dealing with multiple sampling rates, signal processing, communication protocols, as well as overcoming security issues. They have learned how to analyze and synthesize multi-level systems, make appropriate measurements at different system levels, understand the limitation of different components and sub-systems, as well as deal with interactions between software and hardware components. The projects final result is the demonstration of a complex, functional, and robust system built and tested for other projects to use and learn from. By implementing and integrating RFID, WIFI, and ZigBee communication protocol, it is expected that the system created will have four sub-systems that can identify the location of other vehicles, create awareness of its environment for every vehicle, transfer the location data from the local vehicle to the remote user, and finally generate a two dimensional representation of the vehicles' location.