Educating global engineers with EPS@ISEP: The “pet tracker” project experience

Abstract

The European Project Semester (EPS) is a one-semester capstone project/internship programme offered to engineering, product design and business undergraduates by 18 European engineering schools. EPS aims to prepare future engineers to think and act globally, by adopting project-based learning and teamwork methodologies, fostering the development of complementary skills and addressing sustainability and multiculturalism. Since 2011, the EPS@ISEP programme offers a set of multidisciplinary projects to multicultural teams of students, so that each team element can bring to the project its previous knowledge and background experience. In the spring of 2013, a team choose to develop a pet tracker to provide pet owners with information regarding the whereabouts of their pets and, above all, to reduce the number of pets lost. After analysing related products, the team decided to add extra features for product differentiation. Combining a triple-axis accelerometer, a low cost GPS receiver and the GSM/GPRS communication technology, the team designed a system providing pet location, tracking, map display and activity monitoring services. This paper describes the development process of the Pet Tracker system, comprising a wearable device for pets and a website for pet owners.