Fall 2020 Course Descriptions
EN 1-01 Intro to Computational Design
Can we be inspired by caterpillars to design useful robots? Can we use computers to deduce the neuro-mechanical commands that make a caterpillar move forward? What do caterpillars and soft-tissue robots have in common? This class brings such interdisciplinary research experiences to first-year Engineering students through the lens of computational design. We learn in this course about computational modeling, the meaning of computational design and how it can help engineers in making best design decisions. The course will use MATLAB as a computational platform, and cover fundamentals such as a solution space, design decision variables, constraints, optimal points within the space and searching the design space using efficient algorithms, exhaustive enumeration, and approximate algorithms.