The Aithon board: a case study in commercialization of a student project

The Aithon board project started as a senior design project for engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The goal was to design and manufacture a robot controller board suitable for university use. One of the unexpected project outcomes was industry support to market and build the board. In this paper, we provide a technical overview of the board hardware and software, outline the strategies in marketing the board for external sponsorship, and describe educational outcomes achieved during the entire process.