Teaching Embedded Systems by Constructing an Escape Room

Embedded systems are the foundation of many of today's consumer products and industrial applications- A nd they are increasingly connected. To teach this topic we created a course with the overarching goal of designing and constructing an automated escape room. This provided motivation and opportunity for students to learn the engineering and soft skills required for building networked embedded systems. The game was open for faculty members and friends of the students after the course concluded. By dividing the building process into multiple tasks, such as individual puzzles, the presented concept encourages inter- A nd intra-group work, including conceptualizing, designing and developing reliable, connected embedded systems. In this paper we first present the motivation, context, and pedagogical approach of the course, then describe the course structure and conclude with experiences from constructing an escape room with multiple groups of students.