Minutes 04/25/2022

Date

Apr 25, 2022

Attendees

U. Bhowmik, S. Bogdanov, R. Iyer, E. Kudeki, S. Lumetta, U. Ravaioli, A. Schwing, P. Song, Guest: Sayan Mitra

Minutes

The first item of discussion was approval of ECE 398 "Quantum Systems I" as second time temporary offering.  The first offering was taught by Eric Chitambar in Spring 2022 and it is proposed that Kejie Feng will teach it in Fall 2022.   The primary goal of this course is to prepare students for the 400-level sequence in quantum information science.  This submission came in very late for inclusion in the Fall 2022 schedule, probably due to miscommunication between the instructors, to the effect that a separate submission is due every semester for temporary offerings.  Nonetheless, the Curriculum Committing has been supportive about establishing the ECE curriculum on quantum information science and ECE 398 is a necessary gateway to prepare students beyond PHYS 214, in order to tackle with confidence the quantum information track.   The course was approved without any objection for offering in Fall 2022, with the caveat that there should advertising to boost student enrollment, since pre-registration for Fall has already taken place.

The remaining portion of the meeting was devoted to discussion of the request by Sayan Mitra and Katherine Driggs-Campbell to approve ECE 484 "Principles of Safe Autonomy" as an undergraduate laboratory course.  In advance of the meeting, Rakesh Kumar communicated the enthusiastic support from the computer engineering area.  Under invitation of the chair, Sayan Mitra attended the meeting to present along with the rationale of the specific request, also an update on the status of the course to inform the committee about recent  developments.  Given the strong interest in the topic of autonomous vehicles, this unique course can potentially become one of the focal points to showcase the strengths of the ECE Department to prospective students.  There was a lively discussion on the course content and organization in its latest incarnation and how demonstrations could be organized during the major recruitment events.  Also, there was a discussion on what resources may be needed to maintain the course effectiveness at the present current enrollment level (60 students) and on what would be needed to expand the number of seats (up to 100 students) to satisfy the growing demand.  Regarding the specific request to count as laboratory course, Sayan illustrated the course load of ECE 484.  The laboratory assignments are primarily structure to develop and test software modules for an autonomous vehicle.  Modules address a comprehensive range of applications from visual lane tracking, design of controls for way-point following, LIDAR-based localization, obstacle avoidance decision making and so on.  The groups of up to four students develop modules every two weeks following lab session led by Teaching Assistants in which software setup and requirements are discussed in depth.  The assignments are developed on the workstations (equipped with GPUs and a range of specialized software tools) in ECEB 5072.  Besides the lab assignments, the course requires also a final group project.  The scope has expanded over time and currently about 60% of the projects involve porting of the software onto the GEM electric vehicle while the rest are involved in a software-based autonomous racing competition.  From the presentation it was clear that in the class the students are engaged with considerable software development which fully justifies the designation of ECE 484 as a software laboratory.  The request was approved unanimously.  A point was raised as to whether students are engaged also in hardware design/development.  Sayan indicated that this is not a standard activity in the class but that there is openness to support hardware-based opportunities for students who have a specific interest.  While the course should be designated specifically as a software laboratory, in case students are engaged in meaningful hardware projects it would be possible to receive credits for hardware lab by petition, with endorsement of the instructor and approval by ECE Department.