Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 324 de 957
Introduction
The adaptation of university studies to the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA)
established in the Bologna Declaration is showing the necessity of design and introduce
new activities in the teaching process. The aim of these activities is to make the process of
change to the new role easier for both students and university teachers. First ones must
assume a more active attitude, beyond mere receptors of knowledge, and the second ones
must change from transmitters of knowledge in lectures to developers (covering design,
plan and coordination) of diverse teaching activities that ensure the students’ skills
acquisition (Zoller et al, 2003). These changes are particularly useful in technical studies
where the students face multiple and diverse difficulties due to the complex problems
covered by engineering studies. Within this framework, a series of teaching activities are
proposed in this paper with the aim of improve the learning of the techniques used in the
mechanical analysis of industrial robots and increase the students´ interest in the contents
included in the subject “Robot Mechanics”. The activities were planned considering the
available equipments in the “Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Industrial” (ETSII) of
the University of Salamanca (industrial robot ABB IRB140, Fig 1a, which can be controlled
on-line with the flexpendent unit or off-line with a computer, and an electrical gripper
SCHUNK EZ64, Fig 1b) with the objective of overcome the difficulties that the students find
in learning the “Robot Mechanics” contents. In essence, according to previous studies
(Cabezas and Lorenzo, 2006) these difficulties can be summarized in two: (i) on one hand,
the correct interpretation and understanding of the results of mechanical analysis of a
robot manipulator (3D mechanism), and (ii) on the other hand, the laborious
mathematical procedures used in this mechanical analysis. Proposed activities are
designed to apply in a real industrial robot the analytical solutions obtained in the
mechanical analysis (including both direct and inverse position and kinematic analysis),
and simulating diverse industrial processes where mechanical analysis is needed, such as
object manipulation, welding, cutting and so on. The aim of this work is to overcome these
difficulties, enhancing the students’ understanding of the concepts and calculation
methods studied on the position, kinematic and dynamic analysis of manipulators, by
combining the available technical equipments with the advantages that the design and
dynamic simulation software offer nowadays for mutibody systems analysis of mechanical
elements such as manipulators. According to previous works (Vergara, Lorenzo and Rubio,
2007; Vergara, Rubio and Lorenzo, 2008) the application of active teaching methodologies,
based on skills acquisition with a direct and active role of students will provide an
improvement of the learning process.
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011