In my previous blog, I reintroduced the Quanser Method as well as why Quanser supports engineering education. We believe the world needs more engineers, and we want to play our part in building more of the multidisciplinary, hands-on, authentic and fearless variety. We focus our efforts on enhancing the education experiences of today’s students at the academic institutions that are sculpting modern engineers. Following up on the idea of starting with Why by Simon Sinek, I want to expand on the Quanser Method with how we chose to go about making better engineers, and what we are doing as an academic organization. This blog is summarized as a graphic in the concluding remarks for TLDR purposes.

Academic Reach

Improving engineering education is not a new endeavor. External bodies such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) “provides assurance that a college or university program meets the quality standards of the profession for which that program prepares graduates” since as early as 1932. Depending on the country and province you are in, bodies such as the Professional Engineers Ontario regulate the practice of professional engineering. They also establish, maintain and develop standards of knowledge and skill, standards of practice for the profession, and standards of professional ethics. PEO also points to a list of engineering programs across Canada that are certified by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) for students to begin their professional careers at.

On the other hand, you don’t have to look outside an engineering institution to find like-minded individuals also interested in this. Academics all around the world are deeply invested in the processes that mold students into engineers. It could be argued that modern well-rounded engineers were probably introduced to a variety of concepts at early stages of their academic careers. Engineering outreach often motivates students to pursue engineering to begin with, and their primary education at an academic institution only propels that ship further. A variety of opportunities take those fundamentals to team-based or solo projects, piquing their independent thinking and curiosity, and often culminating in innovative research.

How better can we build modern engineers than to work with academics who are already doing so? One of the primary ways in which Quanser helps the world create better engineers is by directly engaging with academics – professors, educators, innovators, deans, chairs, etc. who are focusing their efforts on cutting edge research, modern education, project-based learning and community/STEM outreach. We provide numerous pathways and tools to take solutions to the outreach level, intuitive hardware and software interfaces for projects, industry relevant curriculum for courses, as well as resources for enabling research and a place to find what academics have done with our solutions

How-What 1: The Quanser Self-Driving Car Studio offering provides a 1/10th scale environment for self-driving research, education as well as outreach related activities catering to a variety of academic needs.

Academic Impact

Industry trends are rapidly changing. Industry 5.0 is here to integrate artificial intelligence, automation and robotic technology into manufacturing production processes, while enabling workers to play an engaging and active role in decision making and design, all while the lines on whether Industry 4.0 ever started or finished are still blurry. It is vital that any efforts we put into enabling the success of future engineering students focuses in areas most relevant to the demands for skills in industry today and in the future.

It takes a quick search or two to get a list of modern engineering trends and associated fields of growth in the years to come. While Quanser has deep roots in Control Systems, the corresponding applications are countless. We have developed car simulations to teach cruise control, autonomous drone swarms and a fleet of platooning robots, collaborative and haptic robotics, all to push limits of control systems engineering and demonstrate advanced concepts in lab settings with fundamental hardware.

Within the last year, we have primarily focused our efforts on academic solutions catering to research, teaching, outreach and PBL technologies for emerging technologies in Robotics and Mechatronics, Autonomous Systems & Applied AI, as well as Controls and Dynamics, that are key elements of modern industrial demand, as well as pillars to modern engineering education.

How-What 2: Quanser solutions cover a range of academic needs under the umbrellas of Controls, Dynamics, Robotics, Mechatronics, Autonomous Systems as well as Applied AI.

Academic Relevance

Given rapidly changing modern trends and the variability related to how the solutions are used by academics, it is paramount for us to adopt academic design philosophies for solutions ourselves. This leads to product and solution design that is often multi-objective. Let’s see this in an example.

On one hand, the expandability, customizability, open-architecture and affordability of lower cost solutions is fantastic for an education-centric lab or a research lab armed with numerous students, an example in Robotics being the TurtleBot 3. On the other end of the spectrum are solutions with industrial performance, quality control, specifications and standards, the corresponding example in Robotics being the Otto 100. While the latter represents systems being used in real-world scenarios, they are often locked behind proprietary layers of software, or just not affordable for academic use.

My reason to bring this up is academic usage itself. It is important to design solutions for academia that cater to how the systems are going to be used day to day, both by academics and their students. If one could combine industrial performance, repeatability and consistency, along with an open-architecture software environment, expandable electrical and mechanical interfaces, full teaching resources, research examples and templates, multi-language support, real-time parameter tuning and data scoping/probing, you could call the solution truly applicable to any academic endeavor. This is what we mean by our solutions being academic, resulting in highly performant open-architecture systems that are real-time, robust, instrumented yet expandable, and most importantly, student-proof.

How-What 3: Quanser solutions are designed for academic use, balancing open-architecture with intuitive user interfaces and APIs, robustness and high performance with customizability, etc., which enable academics to utilize the platform for a variety of tasks related to innovative research, transformative education as well as STEM outreach.

Academic Support

Lastly, in addition to meeting the needs of the academia, it is also important to prioritize efforts that grow and empower the academic community as a whole. This boils down to activities catered directly towards the success of educators and researchers. At Quanser, we have two unique teams that prioritize these initiatives.

The R&D Academic Applications team focuses on product development support by scoping product requirements based on user surveys, market research, user interface requirements etc. Along with this, we are also responsible for academic content creation – research examples, lab procedures, recommended assessment questionnaire, lab software files for instructors and students, outreach demos, setup guides, project ideas, etc., all ultimately reducing the time to integrate the solutions into a existing/new courses and labs. We also write technical blogs and webinars for our academic partners.

The Customer Success team focuses on end-user experiences and directly engages with our partners. They host YOUser webinars to showcase user research and education, where you can directly hear and gain valuable insight from academics utilizing our solutions. They also maintain a knowledge base repository for best practices, write whitepapers, tutorials, handle RMAs and technical support requests, all while simultaneously consulting and developing content directly with academics based on modifications they desire.

We also provide a range of services to our academic partners at no cost, for example – Grant Proposal Support. Preparing a grant proposal is hard, time-consuming work. The funding guidelines are often complex, and the competition for available funding sources is fierce. Additionally, needing to secure internal approval for a proposal before submitting can make the process daunting, especially for new researchers. With all these challenges, academics want to ensure that their grant proposal stands out from the rest. While university research services provide valuable assistance, leveraging Quanser’s technical expertise boosts the chances of securing one’s next funding proposal.

If you are coming here from my previous blog (The Quanser Method: Why Support Engineering Education) where I talked about empty spaces for kick-off events, foosball tournaments, company BBQs, holiday parties, lunch room banter, etc. you’ll know where the boat cruises and company wide motivation fit in as well. We have over 80 staff headquartered in a well oiled academic support machine out of Toronto, Canada, working to make your goals and vision come true, and to support your endeavors in research, teaching, or outreach.

How-What 4: Quanser staff at our annual summer boat cruise, taking time to celebrate the success of our academic partners, our solutions in over 1000 institutions globally, and over 3000 research publications validated on Quanser devices, and the legacy of our technology and endeavors aimed at the growth of the academic community.

Concluding Remarks

In this blog and the previous one, I have established why Quanser supports engineering education, how we are going about it and what academic initiatives enable us to grow and empower the community, ultimately leading to better engineering graduates.

My thoughts on this subject are ever evolving and is primarily fueled by conversations I have had with you, our partners, in this process. If you have any questions, please reach out to me directly via email (murtaza.bohra@quanser.com) and I’m happy to chat more.

Talk soon, Murtaza