CRITIQUE OF ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS AND ABILITIES My abilities as an engineering designer have greatly improved over the years

due to the practical experience I have gained in courses such as AER201, Advanced Power Electronics, and Thesis as well as a very practical and hands-on PEY with MDA. My usual engineering design process fundamentally breaks down to 5 steps, an engineering design process taught to young students by Teach Engineering[1] as I will describe below and summarized in Figure 1. How the process works typically is that the initial problem is divided into tasks and each of these tasks goes through the engineering design process in order to end up with a full finalized and functional solution to the initial problem. 1. Ask: This step encompasses the identification of the problem, criteria, requirements, and constraints. As a student and intern, the initial problem is usually given by a professor or supervisor. However, the initial problem definition can usually be split up into many sub-problems that need to be identified and addressed. Based on the course or project, most requirements are inherited from the faculty or management. However, often times more detailed and specific requirements, constraints, and criteria can be developed in order to fully understand every aspect of the problem. Figure 1: Teach Engineering's Engineering Design Process 2. Imagine: This is the step that I will often spend the most time on. Depending on the project, it requires a lot of research in order to learn new concepts or skills that will enable me to generate a list of possible solutions. I usually develop very simple prototypes as proofs-of-concept and generate metrics to benchmark and compare each solution. For example, during AER201 we developed very basic prototypes using Styrofoam, cardboard, and other materials to evaluate the functionality of various solutions. The list of possible solutions is narrowed until the best one is left to design. 3. Plan: This is often a shorter but very crucial stage of my engineering design process. It involves the generation of milestones and deadlines that would be required to generate a working solution within a given time frame. A general budget and a list of required supplies and services are usually developed to give my professor or supervisor and idea of the cost of the solution. It is after this phase that the approval of the project must be given in order to continue. If approval is not granted based on estimated timeline and budget then I have to return to step 1 in order to think of a better solution. 4. Create: This is the most fun and valuable step where mistakes are made, experiences are gained, and lessons are learned. Any new ideas, concepts, languages, or subjects that have not yet been learned must be thoroughly researched. In other words, I need to become an expert at whatever it is that is needed to develop the solution. For example, if I plan to use the Kinect for computer vision, I need to research and learn how to use the Kinect API, what open source libraries are available to use, and maybe even learn a new programming language, depending on the requirements. After Im comfortable with my level of expertise in the field, a prototype or

model is built according to the best solution from the Imagine stage and the deadlines and budgets from the Plan phase. Throughout the building of the prototype, many design decisions have to be made and these will depend on the timeline, budget, and current knowledge. There may be a case where a simpler but less accurate solution exists. In this case I often will choose the simple solution in order to meet deadlines and budgets with the goal in mind to come back to the decision in the future, if possible, and re-evaluate to see if there is time and money to improve the solution to the more accurate one. 5. Improve: This step is crucial to creating the best solution possible. Once a task has reached this stage, it is important to communicate the results and receive feedback and evaluate what about the solution to the task can be improved. Due to the large amount of research in the field and the attained level of expertise, I usually know where I can make improvements based on the design decisions I made throughout Create phase. This 5-step engineering design process is re-iterated until the solution solves the problem while meeting all requirements, constraints, and criteria, or until the deadline has been reached. The final outcome is that each sub-task of the initial problem that goes through this design process is optimized and as effective as can be and these sub-tasks are combined giving way to the final solution. My biggest strength in the engineering design process is one that I learned through my years in Engineering Science: work hard. I am a very persistent worker and will do whatever it takes to get something done or figure out some problem and solve it. It might take days and it might be frustrating but I always work to accomplish my tasks effectively. One area of improvement that I have to work on are in keeping focused on the task at hand and not getting too caught up with some small detail of a task. There will sometimes be a small problem that I get stuck on and focus too much attention on while the overall goal of the task isnt being accomplished and may not require the smaller problem to be solved. Another area of improvement would be to know when to ask for help. Ill often take time researching some concepts or solutions while simply asking someone for help or advice could take a fraction of the time to gain just as much understanding and awareness. Using the concept of Rubber duck debugging could also help me decrease the amount of time working on bugs or learning about concepts and is something I plan on using during ECE472. THREE AREAS OF INNOVATION 1) Autonomous robotics including computer vision, image processing, navigation, localisation 2) Application of control theories to other fields in order to make existing systems more efficient 3) RFID and NFC technology

REFERENCES Teach Engineering. The Engineering Design Process. Internet: http://www.teachengineering.org/engrdesignprocess.php, [Jan. 13, 2012]