Mess around with Legos four hours each week. Build an autonomous robot to specifications. Unleash your creation against rival competitors and let the blocks fall where they may. All this, and earn four Group III distribution credits.

That’s ELEC 201, Introduction to Engineering Design, a.k.a. the Lego Lab. The course takes its inspiration from several robot-oriented courses taught at other universities, including a midterm, optional elective contest offered at MIT. But while these courses are geared to engineers and scientists, ELEC 201 targets nonengineers.

Interdisciplinary student teams are charged to build a robot that will accomplish a given task better than competitors’ robots. The 2002 contest, for instance, required a robot to navigate a ping-pong-sized, slightly sloped table to collect more balls in one minute than its opponent. Solving the problem compels students to learn and apply engineering design principles.

James Young, professor of electrical and computer engineering, says that the Lego Lab succeeds where other Group III distribution courses struggle because of the way it conveys the material. A typical science or engineering course starts at the bottom with facts and formulas; these details are then built up to create concepts. The Lego Lab, however, starts with the concept—the competitive game. To attack the problem, students must actively seek out the details.

“If I went in and just started giving lectures about control theory, I know most of the students wouldn’t care,” Young states. “Instead, I talk briefly about control problems and different approaches they could take with their robots. I know that eventually, the students are going to ask, ‘Why won’t this thing follow a straight line?’ That’s when they get motivated to drill down to the details.”

James Young

Young notes that each student follows a different path through the material, depending on the expertise of the team and his or her individual interests. Some may focus on mechanics, some on programming, and others on algorithms or strategy. As was overheard during one lab practice session: “I’m a computer science major . . . I don’t have to deal with real-world applications!”

Being an engineer doesn’t give you a leg up, according to Gary Printy, a junior electrical engineering major whose team constructed 2002’s winning robot, Disco Stu. “What we do as electrical engineers really doesn’t apply to the problem in the class—building a robot,” he says. “This course is really about the basics of solving a problem.”

Lectures cover an array of specific technical details associated with the robots, as well as more general information on the business of engineering. Students discuss ethics cases and analyze the lessons to be learned from high-profile engineering failures—“Beyond the ones they are experiencing themselves in the lab,” Young chuckles.

Most teams are happy just to build a robot that works. “We’re going over to the other side of the board and hoping that the other one doesn’t,” explained one 2002 team. Ultimately, this aim wasn’t trivial, as the most frequent outcome in competition was a tangled robot mess. Disco Stu lost one bout this way, but ultimately won through the reliable execution of a straightforward program.

“People told me this was the most fun class at Rice,” says Stephanie Clark, a studio art major who served on the Disco Stu team with Printy and Tiffany Truss, a freshman deciding between mechanical and electrical engineering. “At first, I had absolutely no idea what we were supposed to do. But I was able to contribute. I’m proud. I understand what’s happening now.”