Mechatronics is a design process that includes a combination of Mechanical engineering, Electrical engineering, Control engineering and Computer engineering.
A mechatronics engineer unites the principles of mechanics, electronics, and computing to generate a simpler, more economical and reliable system. The term "mechatronics" was coined by Tetsuro Mori, the senior engineer of the Japanese company Yaskawa in 1969. An industrial robot is a prime example of a mechatronics system; it includes aspects of electronics, mechanics, and computing to do its day-to-day jobs.
“The word, mechatronics is composed of mecha from mechanics and tronics from electronics. In other words, technologies and developed products will be incorporating electronics more and more into mechanisms, intimately and organically, and making it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.”
– T. Mori, “Mechatronics,” Yasakawa Internal Trademark Application Memo,
21.131.01, July 12, 1969.
In mechatronics-based product realization: mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering and information systems are integrated throughout the design process so that the final products can be better than the sum of its parts.
• Mechatronics system is not:
– simply a multi-disciplinary system
– simply an electromechanical system
– just a control system
Elements of Mechatronics - Mechanical
• Mechanical elements refer to
- mechanical structure, mechanism, thermo-fluid, and hydraulic aspects of a mechatronics system.
• Mechanical elements may include static/dynamic characteristics.
• A mechanical element interacts with its environment purposefully.
• Mechanical elements require physical power to produce motion, force,
heat, etc.
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| Figure 1. Mechanical elements |
Elements of Mechatronics - Electromechanical
• Electromechanical elements refer to:
– Sensors
• A variety of physical variables can be measured using sensors, e.g., light using photo-resistor, level and displacement using potentiometer, direction/tilt using magnetic sensor, sound using microphone, stress and pressure using strain gauge, touch using micro-switch, temperature using thermistor, and humidity using conductivity sensor.
– Actuators
• DC servomotor, stepper motor, relay, solenoid, speaker, light emitting diode (LED), shape memory alloy, electromagnet, and pump apply commanded action on the physical process
• IC-based sensors and actuators (digital-compass, -potentiometer, etc.).
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| Figure 2. Electromechanical elements |
Elements of Mechatronics - Electrical/Electronic
– Electrical components (e.g., resistor (R), capacitor (C), inductor (L), transformer, etc.), circuits, and analog signals
• Electronic elements refer to:
– analog/digital electronics, transistors, thyristors, opto-isolators, operational amplifiers, power electronics, and signal conditioning
• The electrical/electronic elements are used to interface electromechanical sensors and actuators to the control interface/computing hardware elements.
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| Figure 3. Electrical/Electronic elements |
Elements of Mechatronics - Control Interface/Computing Hardware
– Analog-to-digital (A2D) converter, digital-to-analog (D2A) converter, digital input/output (I/O), counters, timers, microprocessor, microcontroller, data acquisition and control (DAC) board, and digital signal processing (DSP) board
• Control interface hardware allows analog/digital interfacing
– communication of sensor signal to the control computer and communication of control signal from the control computer to the actuator
• Control computing hardware implements a control algorithm, which uses sensor measurements, to compute control actions to be applied by the actuator.
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| Figure 4. Computing hardware |
Elements of Mechatronics - Computer/Information System
– computer-aided dynamic system analysis, optimization, design, and simulation
– virtual instrumentation
– rapid control prototyping
– hardware-in-the-loop simulation
– PC-based data acquisition and control
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| Figure 5. Information system |
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