Design of Electromechanical Robotic Systems
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this project-based course on designing, building, and testing field robotic systems, with ocean waves and marine structures as the central engineering challenge. Students work in teams, each member owning a subsystem such as electronics, instrumentation, or machine elements, and carry designs through construction and testing under uncertain operating conditions. Lecture and project materials cover basic statistics, linear systems, Fourier transforms, random processes, and spectral analysis, alongside applications to extreme events and structural loading. Ethics in engineering practice is folded into the technical curriculum rather than treated separately. Materials include course notes, project assignments, and design documentation drawn from an actual MIT course in mechanical and ocean engineering. There is no institutional grading or certificate, but the full syllabus and project structure are provided for self-study, making it a substantive introduction to real-world robotic system design under harsh, unpredictable environmental conditions.