Dr. Carl Crane has been awarded the 2015-2016 Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Undergraduate Teacher of the Year Award. The award was primarily based on his work in developing the course EML 2023, Computer Aided Graphics and Design. He introduced a rapid prototyping component in the course and established a rapid prototyping facility for the department that is comprised of four additive and one subtractive rapid prototyping machine. The capital cost of these machines exceeds $250,000. Dr. Crane also ‘flipped’ the course by recording all the lectures. Students are told what lectures to watch before coming to class. In class they perform hands on activities related to that day’s topic. The class now meets only two times a week instead of three, yet the students receive much more instruction as compared to the traditional three times a week class lecture. In addition, Dr. Crane has been a leader in the department’s STEM outreach efforts. He is a faculty mentor to the P.K. Yonge FIRST robotics team for the fifth year in a row. He also mentors students at Lake Forest Elementary school as part of the Alachua County Vex robotics program.
Original article from the Florida Institute for National Security.
Biography:
Carl D. Crane is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics (CIMAR) at the University of Florida, as well as a member of the University of Florida Transportation Institute’s Internal Steering Committee. He received his B.S. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1978 and 1979. Following this he spent five years as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. He then went on to continue his studies and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Florida in 1987. In 2003 he was named a fellow of ASME.
Dr. Crane has been involved in research in the areas of spatial mechanisms, tensegrity systems, robotics, and autonomous navigation for over twenty five years. Current activities include the development and implementation of system architectures for autonomous ground vehicle navigation and the design and implementation of passive parallel mechanisms to be used for force control applications. Dr. Crane was team leader of the University of Florida’s 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle development efforts and for the University of Florida’s 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge project team. Dr. Crane has authored one book and over forty papers in the area of spatial geometry and robotic systems. He has supervised one hundred and ten Master’s graduates and thirty three Ph.D. graduates during his career at the University of Florida.
Contact:
Dr. Carl Crane
Office: MAE-B 326
Phone: 352.392.9461
Email: ccrane@ufl.edu