Senior capstone design experiences for ABET accredited undergraduate electrical and computer engineering education

Capstone senior design experiences are both a graduation requirement for undergraduate engineering majors and for ABET accreditation of these programs. A senior design course is typically the last bridge for students between undergraduate education and the engineering profession in their respective disciplines. The course differs from other lecture and laboratory based courses in the engineering curriculum in fundamental ways. We describe these fundamental differences and present our experience in advising students for semester-long capstone design projects in electrical and computer engineering at the Savannah campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology over a period of four years between 2001 and 2005. We give details about the course objectives, structure, outcomes and related assessment. We also give details of completed projects, all involving software and hardware development and integration, with several projects dealing with the development of algorithms and applications for mobile robots. We conclude with the lessons learned, observations and recommendations that should be of value to engineering educators.