Installation of Mechatronics Education Using the MindStorms for Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, O.N.C.T

Abstract

In the late 1950s Japanese economy were growing remarkable. In order to sustain this economic growth and foster human resources who can provide advances in technology and science, the government established particular kind of educational institution, National College of Technology, in 1962. The educational system of National College of Technology is positioned between industrial high school and technological university, because the age range of student is from fifteen to twenty. Basically, the first grade students are the graduates of junior high school so that students are not sufficiently grown to understand special subjects and mechanisms of most advanced technologies. There are 55 scholastic institutions throughout Japan at the present day, so that one or two schools have been established in each prefecture. Each school is allowed to construct department and to have own educational curriculum, and most of schools have own advanced course (http://www.kosen-k.go.jp/english/index.html). Educational programs for early year are mainly composed of general studies such as mathematics, foreign and international languages, social studies, and physical education, and so on. Meanwhile special subjects including graduation research are implemented in higher-grade educational program. The purpose of graduation research is to foster the ability as engineer, and then final-year students engage in researching at their interesting laboratory for one year, in which lots of scientific papers have been published every year. Mechatronics is one of the major technical studies and consists of wide variety of technologies, such as mechanics, electronics, programming, and robotics, and so on, so that it is difficult to compose an educational program of mechatronics. In fact, many textbooks for mechatronics covering a broad range of specific subject have been published. To select a text book suit for levels of student is also difficult. Then, the author assumed that practical work more effect for mechatronics installation education than classroom lecture using textbooks. Mind Storms, a set of small plastic and various shaped blocks, motors and several different types of sensors, produced by LEGO Group, has been already known as one of good educational toolkits for mechatronics installation (Komatsu et al., 2000)(Nakashima et al., 20 www.intechopen.com