ENR 355: Robotics and Sensors

Department of Engineering Physics, Coe College | Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Download Full Syllabus (PDF) Upload Assignments to Moodle

Course Description

On November 3 2025, the New York Times reported that Amazon is planning to replace 75% of its human workforce with robotics and automation, ETA 2033, enough said?

ENR 355 serves as an introductory course to mechatronics. A good robotic application is just like any other automation: it is the system integration of mechanical, electrical, computer hardware and software.

If you have done grade-school robotics and played with Lego before, it won’t be hard to put things together and make it move, and it won’t be hard to power the movements with a motor. In this class, we are going to study what is under the hood: what is the design, math, signal, and code to make movements with controls. When other kids are still fine-tuning each turning and steps manually, we can actually save lots of time by letting the bots figure it out themselves with sensors, feedback loops and computation.

Thanks to the maker culture, it is now possible to perform any robotic tasks with commercial-grade hardware and open-sourced software support. I do not doubt if you can learn how to build a servo/motor-sensor-control system in this class, you will have no issue working with, or even develop R&D or industrial robots in the future.

Major Milestones

The lectures and knowledge base will be delivered based on the three major milestones:

3RPS parallel manipulator with stepper motor and position sensor.
Micromouse: Based on the classic maze-solving small wheeled robots since 1977.
Isaac Sim: Let's try out AI-driven robo solutions powered by NVIDIA Isaac Sim.

Lecture Slides & Resources

Milestone 0: Warming up

Lec 0.1: [Lecrture Slides] [Assignment#1] [Prelabs#1]

Lec 0.2: [Lecrture Slides] [Assignment#2] [Prelabs#2]

Milestone 1: 3RPS Parallel Manipulator

Lec 1.1: [Lecrture Notes] [Assignment#3] no prelabs \o/

Lec 1.2: [Lecrture Slides] [Assignment#4] Linear Algebra Notebook

Lec 1.3: [Lecrture Slides] PID notebook

Milestone 2: Micromouse

Lec 2.1: [Slides] [Prelabs] [Assignment]

Milestone 3: Isaac Sim

Lec 3.1: [Slides] [Prelabs] [Assignment]

Hands-on Sessions

Lab 1 (Soldering 101): [Tutorials]

Lab 2 (Laser cutting): [Tutorials]

Lab 3 (Signal and Scope): [Tutorials]

Lab 4 (3D Printing): [Tutorial] [Files]

Course Philosophy

Grading: The Learning Loop

This course uses a mastery-based "learning loop." There is no partial credit. Assignments are evaluated as Exemplary, Success, or Retry. The goal is to try, make mistakes, reflect, revise, and try again—without penalty for mistakes, as long as you demonstrate growth.

Tokens

You will start with 5 tokens. One token can be spent to get a 36-hour deadline extension or to retry an assignment a second time (a third submission).

AI Policy: "Roller Skates, Not Crutches"

AI tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) are permitted as long as they support your learning and do not replace your independent thought. All AI-generated content (code or text) must be clearly cited and labeled.

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