Sunday, March 30, 2008
UniMAP boasts itself as a true-blue technical university which fulfills the interest of students who are inclined towards practical-based engineering education. UniMAP graduates are budding engineers who have been groomed to be competent and confident enough to explore entrepreneurial possibilities upon graduation. They are expected to not only exhibit excellence in knowledge and skills directly related to their engineering fields of study, but are also proficient in communication and ICT skills, as well as possessing unsurpassed traits of professionalism and patriotism. It is hoped that because their education has been excellent, they will become the engineering leaders of tomorrow. Indeed this is a testimony of UniMAP’s commitment to Engineering as a discipline.
In order to achieve maximum benefit for the country at large, the areas of focus of public technical universities are determined by the government. In the case of UniMAP, it was decided that electronic-based engineering should be the focus. However, this does not mean that there is no room for other disciplines of engineering to be developed here. Rather, all related fields of engineering and technology that can support the advancement of electronic-based engineering, can be offered. Of the fifteen undergraduate programmes leading to B. Eng on offer, six are not directly within the confines of the ‘electronic-based’ category.
References : Universiti Malaysia Perlis(UniMAP) Portal
Information Technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.
Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term is more recognizable than ever before. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems. When computer and communications technologies are combined, the result is information technology, or "infotech". Information Technology (IT) is a general term that describes any technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or disseminate information. Presumably, when speaking of Information Technology (IT) as a whole, it is noted that the use of computers and information are associated.
ICT (information and communications technology - or technologies) is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, encompassing: radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning. ICTs are often spoken of in a particular context, such as ICTs in education, health care, or libraries. The term is somewhat more common outside of the United States.
According to the European Commission, the importance of ICTs lies less in the technology itself than in its ability to create greater access to information and communication in underserved populations. Many countries around the world have established organizations for the promotion of ICTs, because it is feared that unless less technologically advanced areas have a chance to catch up, the increasing technological advances in developed nations will only serve to exacerbate the already-existing economic gap between technological "have" and "have not" areas.
Ways In Which ICT Can Be Integrated Into Learning And Teaching.
0 comments Posted by Afifee at 5:20 AMTeachers can assist students to enhance the development of their information literacy by providing opportunities for them to use a range of information and communication technologies during all four stages of the inquiry process. Technologies such as the internet, cdroms, audioconferencing, faxes, library catalogues, videos, etc can be used to gather information. Technologies such as spreadsheets, databases, wordprocessors, video editing, etc can be used to process information. Technologies such as publishing software, drawing programmes, photo editing, etc can be used to publish information. Technologies such as ohps, videos, multimedia presentations, etc can be used to communicate information. Wherever possible the development of skills in the use of ICT should be undertaken within the context of the classroom programme as opposed to developing these as a ‘learning area’ in their own right.
A second key function of ICT in teaching and learning is to enhance the development of student problem solving capability. A student who is capable of solving problems can identify potential problems or issues, can conceive of a range of possible solutions, can design the most appropriate solution, and can implement and evaluate its effectiveness. As with the inquiry process, problem solving can be developed across all learning areas, and the core elements of the problem solving process remain the same irrespective of the achievement level at which students are operating. For example, a year two student working on a technological problem might use a draw programme to draw a one dimensional depiction of their solution to a technological problem, while a year seven student might be expected to use a CAD programme to create a three dimensional electronic model of their design. The process remains the same but the complexity of the outcome increases as students move through the achievement levels.
As with the inquiry process, teachers can enhance the capability of students to solve problems by providing opportunities for them to use a range of information and communication technologies during all four stages of the problem solving process. Technologies such as the internet, cdroms, audioconferencing, video, etc can be used to identify problems or issues.
Technologies such as databases, mind mapping software, spreadsheets, etc can be used to develop possible solutions to the problems or issues. Depending on the learning area, technologies such as CAD, drawing programmes, publishing software, video recording, etc can be used to design possible solutions. Technologies such as databases, multimedia presentation software, publishing software, etc might be used to implement, evaluate and present a report regarding the effectiveness of a chosen solution. Once again the focus should not be on teaching students to use various information and communication technologies. The teaching focus should be on facilitating students to develop ICT skills whilst they solve authentic problems within the context of learning across the curriculum.
Information and communication technology has a role in the learning and teaching process as a teaching tool. This role is of less significance than the potential of ICT to enhance the inquiry and problem solving processes, and should be transparent to the learner in much the same as the whiteboard or chalk is. Never the less ICT can be a powerful teaching tool. For example, the concept of how data can be represented in different ways can be easily taught by using graphing software. By making a pie graph and a bar graph linked to the same data, a teacher can change the values for different data categories and ask students to predict what will happen to each graph. The outcome is instantaneous and the concept is grasped with comparative ease. Similarly interactive cdroms, such as the PM range of talking books add another dimension to a classroom’s reading programme, while contemporary distance education initiatives would be unfathomable without powerful teaching tools such as audiographics and the Internet. These are only some of the many ways in which ICT can be used as a teaching tool.
ICT can also enhance the administrative functions of learning and teaching, which in turn has a direct impact on pedagogy. One key administrative area in which ICT is becoming more and more important is recording and analysing student achievement. The process from planning classroom programmes, through to implementation, through to assessment, through to planning again can all be managed effectively with ICT. Schools can either create their own databases or use commercial software, which allows teachers to plan their classroom programmes, design their assessment tasks and then record student achievement against their chosen criteria. The identification of next learning steps for individual students or cohorts of students then becomes easier and more efficient, leading to more effective decision making about individual, class and school wide initiatives.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Mechatronics combines mechanical, electrical and software engineering in the design, development and control of diverse systems used in a range of industries including manufacturing, medicine and the service industries. Examples of mechatronic 
systems 
include aircraft, dishwashers, motor vehicles, automated manufacturing plants, medical and surgical devices and systems, robots of all types, many toys, artificial organs and many others. Mechatronics engineers are therefore involved in almost every possible industry at levels from applications development to manufacturing to advanced research.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
—Tom Atwood, Editor-in-Chief, Robot Magazine
In addition, CoroWare has designed a software interface that makes communication with the robots very easy to manage, whether they are being teleoperated or are running autonomously. We became very early adopters of Microsoft Robotics Studio as our primary software platform because it allows us to integrate code written for specific purposes in different languages. For example, our vision code is primarily written in C, but other functions are handled in C++ or C#. MSRS does the work of making these different chunks of code talk to each other seamlessly. CoroWare has integrated a very power efficient electronics package (built around Via boards and chips) with plenty of computing power, so we can easily take advantage of MSRS even when running computationally complex algorithms.The fact that the same robots can be used in teleoperated or in autonomous mode with no major hardware changes has been a real boon for us. We can run our experiments on how variation in sensor input affects controllability in a teleoperation task one day and the next day use the same robot in our experiments that explore autonomous category learning. The fact that we can compare data from human teleoperators with data from autonomous robots turns out to be a real plus. For example, our experiments are already yielding some interesting and counter-intuitive results, including the finding that sometimes perceiving the world with less detail and precision makes effective learning much easier, not harder.
In other work, Luke Hunsberger is using our six CoroBots in his research on multiagent intentionality. Luke is interested in how agents operating autonomously nevertheless manage to communicate their unique perspectives on a problem well enough to allow them to cooperate in finding a solution. Humans do this all the time. You and I can figure out without a lot of conversation how to cooperate to pick up a big object and move it across a room. This seems simple, but I have to understand a lot about your capabilities and knowledge of the world (and vice versa) for that to work. Luke wants to know how we can give robots that same capability, and having six of them makes it possible to explore very complicated problems in cooperation. One of the nice things about the CoroBots is their accessibility. We have been able to bring many students into the lab to work on our research, from the teleop to autonomous learning projects, and several of them (including all of the students in the photos) either are or are about to be co-authors on papers coming out of the lab. Several are planning to go on to careers in robotics, and we're confident they'll be working from a solid foundation thanks to the work they've been able to do in the lab with our robots.
Early PLCs were designed to replace relay logic systems. These PLCs were programmed in "ladder logic", which strongly resembles a schematic diagram of relay logic. Modern PLCs can be programmed in a variety of ways, from ladder logic to more traditional programming languages such as BASIC and C. Another method is State Logic, a Very High Level Programming Language designed to program PLCs based on State Transition Diagrams.
A microcontroller (also MCU or µC) is a computer-on-a-chip. It is a type of microprocessor emphasizing high integration, low 
power consumption, self-sufficiency and cost-effectiveness, in contrast to a general-purpose microprocessor (the kind used in a PC). In addition to the usual arithmetic and logic elements of a general purpose microprocessor, the microcontroller typically integrates additional elements such as read-write memory for data storage, read-only memory, such as flash for code storage, EEPROM for permanent data storage, peripheral devices, and input/output interfaces. At clock speeds of as little as a few MHz or even lower, microcontrollers often operate at very low speed compared to modern day microprocessors, but this is adequate for typical applications. They consume relatively little power (milliwatts), and will generally have the ability to sleep while waiting for an interesting peripheral event such as a button press to wake them up again to do something. Power consumption while sleeping may be just nanowatts, making them ideal for low power and long lasting battery applications.
Microcontrollers are frequently used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile engine control systems, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, and toys. By reducing the size, cost, and power consumption compared to a design using a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices, microcontrollers make it economical to electronically control many more processes.
