Strategies to improve engineering student’s knowledge of emerging technologies

This paper describes some successful experiences within engineering departments where emerging paradigms have been used to improve student’s know-how. This experience has resulted in students with high skills in fields of high acceptance in the employment market and with experience to deal within multi-disciplinary working teams. Aspects of a case study that has involved the collaboration and supervision of staff from institutions of two countries (UK and Portugal) are reported. The work included the programming and application of handheld devices as the human-machine interface. The designed machines are mechatronic devices, to be used in Domotic (Domestic Robotic) tasks. The main focus of this paper involves the pedagogical experience, since the technical features have already been published.