What is mechatronics and why teach it?

International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education, Oct 2004 by Bradley, David

Abstract

Despite a world-wide interest in mechatronics education, there is no clear and consistent understanding of what mechatronics is, nor how, and at what level, it should be taught. The key challenge for mechatronics course designers is seen as that of ensuring an appropriate balance between depth and breadth while providing opportunities to enable students to practise integration. The paper discusses this in relation to a number of mechatronic themes. Factors influencing the design, structure and content of a mechatronics programme are discussed and suggestions made as to the possible core content of such a programme.

Keywords education; engineering design; robotics; systems

Mechatronics has developed in the UK from the mid-1980s to the point where there are currently some 42, three-year and four-year undergraduate courses at 27 UK institutions which involve mechatronics in some way in their title, the distribution being as in Table 1.1 There are also many mechatronics-based programmes and courses around the world, including relatively recent developments in countries such as those in Southern Africa, New Zealand, Lithuania, Hungary, Colombia and Switzerland.2-6 Additionally, there are growing numbers of international conferences supported, among others, by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Mechatronics Forum.7-11 These conferences are supplemented by technical journals having mechatronics as their subject area.12,13

However, and despite this world-wide interest in mechatronics, it is still not certain that there is a clear and consistent understanding of what mechatronics is and how, and at what level, it should be taught. A review of the literature about mechatronics will rapidly result in a number of definitions, each of which perhaps seeks to emphasise a slightly different aspect of the mechatronics concept, ranging from design to precision engineering and from sensors to actuators.14,15 Nevertheless, and despite their difference in emphasis, most of the definitions do manage to agree in some way that mechatronics is concerned with the integration of its core technologies to generate new and novel technological solutions in the form of products and systems in which functionality is integrated across those core technologies, with information technology and software engineering then providing the 'glue' which binds the whole together. This integration is also reflected in the various diagrammatic forms that have been used to represent the structure of a mechatronic system, as is seen from the two examples of Fig. 1.

In terms of the development of mechatronic education, the concern in course design has always been that of how to achieve a balance between providing the necessary depth of understanding of the core technologies and the ability to develop solutions which integrate them. This may be compared with the perhaps more usual, subject-based approach to engineering education where the emphasis has tended to be on providing a depth of understanding, often at high levels of detail, within the subject area: something which may well result in a relatively narrow focus with a high degree of specialisation.

In contrast, the education of a mechatronics engineer has to place a greater emphasis on the ability to work across and between individual areas of technology. This is not, however, to suggest that a mechatronics engineer does not have to have a depth of knowledge in certain specialist areas; rather, that such depth is balanced by an understanding and appreciation of the contributions of other areas of technology, as is suggested by Figs. 2 and 3.

The achievement of a balanced programme of mechatronics education must therefore ensure that individuals are provided with sufficient depth in at least one area of technology in order to allow them to make an effective contribution to that area, whilst ensuring the breadth of understanding necessary to give them credibility in regard to other subject specialists. In particular, this means that the mechatronics engineer must be able to speak the 'language' of the individual specialists and hence to act as an 'interpreter' to ensure the correct communication of ideas and concepts between these specialists.19 This basic problem of communication is compounded by the fact that, as will be seen in the following sections, not only do specialists use their own domain-specific terms to describe technologies in those domains but mechatronics, and particularly mechatronics education, can also be considered in relation to a number of 'themes', each of which emphasises a different aspect of the core concept.

The key challenge facing mechatronics course designers is therefore that of ensuring that there is an appropriate balance between depth and breadth within the course, as well as providing opportunities to enable students to practise integration. This then raises questions as to whether mechatronics can, or indeed should, be taught at undergraduate level, particularly within a three-year degree programme, or whether it should be studied at Masters level as a bridging programme, taking students from a wide range of specialist backgrounds and providing them with the necessary breadth of knowledge and integration skills.