Education Outreach
ECE Professors Participate in Outreach Activities
The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering faculty participates in several outreach activities on-campus and off-campus to encourage and support the elementary, middle, and high school students towards the engineering pathway and to inspire the next generation of engineers.
Engineers of Tomorrow Event – Feb 21 and 22, 2022
Faculty from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in collaboration with the Center for STEM Education at Georgia Southern, hosted 7th grade students from the Bulloch County School system in their research labs with hands-on activities over two days: Feb 21 and Feb 22, 2022.
Dr. Rios & Dr. Alba in the Robotics & Intelligent Systems Application Lab
Dr. Rios and Dr. Alba led a session where the students learned programming a small autonomous vehicle to perform the correct movements for parallel parking.
The professors gave demonstrations of the different robotics platforms that are used in the robotics lab for research and teaching activities in the area of autonomous robots. Robotic platforms included the Aibo robot dog, the Nao humanoid robot, and control of autonomous drones.
Dr. Haddad in the Intelligent Networks & Smart Applications Lab
The invited students were introduced to artificial intelligence and machine learning basic concepts. Then, the students participated in an activity using a pre-prepared AI algorithm to detect human motion.
Moreover, the students were split into smaller groups to work on building their own miniature electric vehicles using microcontrollers and sensors to implement collision avoidance functionality.
Dr. Davari in the Laboratory for Advanced Power and Energy Systems (LAPES)
Dr. Davari hosted the 7th-grade students and demonstrated power engineering applications via experiential learning methods. For example, he presented the operation of electric vehicles—regarded as one of the real-world cases in the power engineering field—via various torque-speed characteristics emulated in LAPES. He also shared their applications in smart cities and provided students with hands-on activities.
Bulloch Academy STEM Field Experience – Feb 1, 2022
Dr. Rios & Dr. Alba in the Robotics & Intelligent Systems Application Lab
Middle School students learned about how to program a small drone to fly autonomously. Students did some modifications to a Python program to control the navigation of a drone and fly around a table, flip the drone, and land safely.
Dr. Davari in the Laboratory for Advanced Power and Energy Systems (LAPES)
Dr. Davari hosted high-school students from the Bulloch Academy and introduced them to the inverter-based resources (IBRs) utilized in the current/future power and energy systems. The students had real-world experiences when working with IBR-related equipment and providing them with hands-on activities in LAPES. He elaborated on the applications of the IBRs based on photovoltaics in modern grids while fostering experiential learning and offering students student-centric activities.
Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing • P.O. Box 7995 • Statesboro, Georgia 30460 • 912-478-7412 • engrcomp@georgiasouthern.edu
