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mahutter edited this page Jan 21, 2016 · 36 revisions

Student Templates

This repository is here to orient the students who conduct a project (Studies on Mechatronics, Bachelor-, Semester-, and Master Theses) at the Robotic Systems Lab (RSL) at ETH Zurich. It contains general information, guidelines, templates and helpful links.

You can download all files and templates as a ZIP-file here.

This page contains the general information and overview of a student projects.

Organisation

Bachelor and Semester projects last 14 weeks starting at the first day of the semester and end at the end of the semester. Master projects last 6 months and the starting date is agreed on with the supervisor.

Before the thesis

Make sure to enroll for the thesis in mystudies. To do so, you need to upload a thesis description. Please use the provided template, outline in your words the goal of the thesis and send it to your supervisor for approval.

During the thesis

Please provide your supervisor a work schedule within two weeks after the start of the project.

You will agree with your supervisor on a weekly meeting. The meeting is meant to answer your questions and to check your progress. It is helpful for you to prepare these meetings with the coordination sheet provided in this repository in Coordination report/.

Literature Management

Scientific publications can be found on websites such as

Make sure to access these website from within the ETH network or use VPN. This gives you access to download full PDF files from many publishers.

Use the bibliographies and the cited by functions to find related publications.

For the organization of your references, we recommend to use Mendeley, a free and cross-platform reference management software. As a handy feature, Mendeley can automatically build your BibTeX files. Make sure to follow these instructions to access additional features.

Presentation

During your BA, SA or MA project, you will have two presentations of different format.

Intermediate presentation

An informal intermediate presentation about your work will take place around mid-term. The goal of the presentation is to give a brief summary of the work done, to propose a plan for the continuation of the project, and to discuss about the main directions of the project.

This duration of presentation is strictly limited to 4 minutes (we will interrupt), consist of at least the following content (problem description, method, results, problem/next steps) and will be followed by a 10 min discussion.

Make sure with your supervisor that you fix the date early enough

Final presentation

The final presentation will take place at the end of the project. A test run is presented to and discussed with the supervisors 2–5 days before the public final presentation.

Please arrange exact dates and times for the intermediate and final presentations with your supervisors and the lab administration.

The duration of the final presentations are

  • Bachelor and Semester projects: 15 minutes presentation, 5 minutes questions / discussion,
  • Semester/Bachelor Project with integrated SoM: 22 minutes presentation, 8 minutes questions / discussion,
  • Master projects: 20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes questions / discussion,
  • Studies on Mechatronics (SoM): 10 minutes presentation, 5 minutes questions / discussion.

The presentation is evaluated based on the final public presentation.

For the slides, we recommend to use the template as it is provided in this repository in Presentation/. Further information on the ETH Zurich templates is given here.

Report

A report has to be handed in to the responsible supervisor. The report has to describe the full work performed during the entire project. A preliminary version has to be handed in per e-mail or printed one week after the final presentation or as determined with the supervisor. The preliminary version of the report is discussed with the supervisor. The report is evaluated based on the preliminary version with the requirement that the remarks are incorporated in the final report.

We recommend to use the LaTeX template as it is provided in this repository in Report/. Information on the usage of LaTeX is given in Manuals/The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2E.pdf. Also, make sure to be familiar with the style guide described in Manuals/LaTeX Style Guide.pdf.

Plagiarism

Every student has to make himself/herself familiar with the ETH Zurich rules regarding plagiarism.

Evaluation

You will be evaluated according to the RSL evaluation sheet. For Bachelor, Semester, and Master Theses, the grade consists of

  • 40% General (Commitment, Methodology, Autonomy, Theory etc.),
  • 20% Implementation,
  • 20% Report,
  • 20% Presentation .

For Studies on Mechatronics the grade consists of

  • 40% General (Commitment, Methodology, Autonomy, Theory etc.),
  • 30% Report,
  • 30% Presentation.

Final Submission

After you have revised your report based on the supervisors comments, please prepare a CD/DVD with the following contents:

  • Final report as PDF and as LaTeX source code,
  • Presentation as source file (e.g. PowerPoint) and as PDF,
  • All files (CAD, MATLAB, code etc.) used or created during the project.

Please provide a copy of the CD/DVD to each supervisor and make sure to put the name of the project, your name and the semester on the label. There is need to print and bind your report.

Finally, you have to hand in the CD/DVD together with the printed title page and the signed Declaration of Originality to the secretary.

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