IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 44, NO. 2, MAY 2001 215

An Autonomous Race Car Design CompetitionThomas W. Matthews, Member, IEEEand Richard R. Spencer, Senior Member, IEEE

Index Terms—Design project, senior project.

I. SUMMARY

This paper will describe an innovative collaboration between industry and academia in creating a meaningful designexperience for undergraduate electrical engineering students. The design project involves designing, building and testingan autonomous model race car. The course culminates in a competition. A primary goal of the competition is to provideundergraduates with a meaningful design experience with an emphasis on electronic circuits. This contest has a differentflavor from the well-established IEEE Micromouse competition in the sense that it places the emphasis on the designand construction of an electronic sensing and control system without the microprogramming necessary to solve a maze(although a microprocessor can certainly be used). It is hoped that by placing the emphasis on the circuitry the course willencourage more undergraduates to go into the field of electronic circuit design. The learning experience offered by thecompetition is shaped by, among other things, the format and rules of the competition, the students’ preparation in termsof circuit and control system theory and practice, and by the format of the design project course. This paper will describethe competition in detail and discuss factors affecting the educational experience.

Thomas W. Matthews(S’92–M’95) Received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from California StateUniversity, Sacramento, in 1978 and 1989, respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Uni-versity of California, Davis in 1994.

From 1995 to 1998, he taught in the Department of Electrical Engineering at San Jose State University, and is currently an AssistantProfessor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at California State University Sacramento.

Richard R. Spencer(S’82–M’86–SM’97) received the B.S.E.E. degree from San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, in 1978 and theM.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1982 and 1987, respectively.

He worked in the Radio Products Laboratory at Aydin Energy Division designing circuits for the IF section of microwave transceivers,and at Electro Magnetic Filter Company conducting electromagnetic compatibility testing, while completing his B.S. degree. In 1978,he joined Memorex corporation, where he first worked on disk drive read/write electronics and later was the project manager for anintegrated circuit process monitor chip and test system. At Stanford, his research concentrated on circuit design for integrated sensors.Since leaving Stanford, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis,where is he is currently the Vice Chair for Undergraduate Studies and the Child Family Professor of Engineering. His research focuseson analog and mixed-signal circuits for signal processing and digital communication. He is an active consultant to the IC design industry.

Dr. Spencer received the UCD-IEEE Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1991–1992, 1992–1993, and 1997–1998. He wasa Coorganizer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits and Technology Committee Workshop on Integrated Sensors in 1988, and has been aSession Chair for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference and the Symposium on VLSI Circuits. He was a Guest Coeditor ofthe IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuitsin December 1992. He was a member of the Program Committee for the ISSCC from 1987 to1993 and was the chair of the Sensors, Imagers, and Displays subcommittee from 1995 to 1997.

CD-ROM folder 13.T. W. Matthews is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192–0084 USA.R. R. Spencer is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA.Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9359(01)05717-X.

0018–9359/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE