Mechatronics II: advanced mechatronics for mechanical engineering students

Abstract

Increasingly, the field of mechatronics is seen as an essential background of a practicing mechanical engineer. A course in advanced mechatronics is described which is offered as a joint graduate-undergraduate course and is intended to be a second course in mechatronics. As opposed to many mechatronics courses, this course focuses more on intelligent product design than on DSP or controls applications. Another unique feature of the course is a class-wide project experience in which 10 separate teams work together on various subsystems of a complex robotic rover vehicle. The class was offered for the first time in the Spring of 1999 and 20 students, both graduate and undergraduate participated.