Purdue Polytechnic Institute, also known as PPHS, is in need of a method to teach high school junior and senior students about Industry 4.0, the current industrial revolution. The project will be very hands-on and focused on creating an interactive system for the students. This hands on experience will involve programming and working with a robotic arm and conveyor belt system.
The students will participate in labs designed by students at Purdue University. Through the use of data collection and analysis, PPHS students will be able to assemble and collect operating information and feedback on an assembly line type of manufacturing. The project will use many technical skills such as the Internet of Things, manufacturing practices, and system automation.
The assembly line itself focuses on imprinting a design on a piece of cork. The machine has to first differentiate between cork shape, imprint the correct design, and then be able to analyze the piece as a “pass” or as a “fail.”
As part of the project, parts of the setup are able to be modified by the teachers to create failures or missing code/wiring. This will give students a method to fix errors in real time, and create new code, or modify existing code to ensure the robotic arm and conveyor belt systems work. This will give students a chance to deal with issues that they may encounter in a work environment.
Laboratories will also be created to enforce learning throughout the student interactions. By working with other teams working with the same clients, we will create cohesive labs focused on troubleshooting, system analysis, programming, and other activities in order to deliver not only a good system the students can interact with, but one they can learn from as well.