Raising motivation in real-time laboratories: the soccer scenario

Real-time systems is a topic that one cannot overlook in an engineer's education. However, teaching real-time systems in an undergraduate syllabus is a challenging experience due to conflicting constraints placed on such a course. In this paper we present a new setup for laboratories in the real-time systems course that successfully meets the constraints of mass education, stable environment management, short time span for the labs, and still enables deep involvement of students in the central topic of resource allocation with high motivation.