Mechanical engineering students at BYU‑Idaho are gaining hands-on experience earlier in their program thanks to a newly redesigned freshman course built around a humanitarian-themed robot competition.
The project extends through most of the semester during which students design and build robots that simulate delivering food to undernourished communities. In this course, teams guide their robots through rough terrain, temperature-controlled tunnels, mock river delivery, and zipline drops—each obstacle representing a real-world challenge in global food distribution.
Brother Kendall Teichert, who helped lead the redesign of the Introduction to Engineering Design course, said the goal was to give students meaningful exposure to engineering principles sooner.
“Most of the things in the design process, you don’t need to be a junior engineering major to wrap your mind around,” Teichert said. “We wanted to bring it down to a freshman level and have a really good hands-on experience.”
The semester culminated in the competition where students sent their robots into the simulated arena to complete the various obstacles. The theme, transporting food to undernourished communities, was chosen to help students see engineering as a discipline with real-world impact.
Mechanical engineering major Cole Whitney said the course provided a valuable preview of what engineering really looks like.
“It gives you a sneak peek [of] what’s coming,” he said. “You get experience with the electrical, the software side, the mechanical side…. You get the whole process.”
Whitney advised future students to embrace the whole experience, noting that gaining real engineering practice mattered far more than succeeding on the first attempt. After weeks of refining their design, troubleshooting failures, and rebuilding key components, his team ultimately performed well in the final competition and earned strong marks for their results.
“Keep your design simple,” Whitney said. “Work ahead, … delegate, and work as a team. And don’t stress it. It’s about the process and the learning.”
Teichert said that mindset is exactly what the course is designed to cultivate.
“If you can fail in a safe way early, it's way better than failing later when it's a lot more expensive in engineering,” he said. “[It gives them] confidence to just try things and the ability to make mistakes and to pivot on design.”