Teleoperation from a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment: A Multidisciplinary, Multilevel Systems Engineering Project for Undergraduate Education

There is a constant need to promote retention and better prepare students for their engineering careers in educational programs. Nationally, about 50% of students entering engineering drop out by the junior year. In a typical curriculum, students are exposed to little or no systems engineering concepts until they become seniors. Soft skills and some problem solving skills cannot be effectively developed in a traditional lecture-style setting. Cooperation with a multidisciplinary team with varying levels of experience is also an important component of undergraduate education that receives little emphasis. The Space Engineering Institute (SEI) at Texas A&M University supports multidisciplinary and multilevel (freshman to senior) applied research projects for undergraduate engineering students. This paper describes one such project and evaluates its effect on undergraduate education.