Innovation and failure in mechatronics design education

Innovative engineering design always has associated with it the risk of failure, and it is the role of the design engineer to mitigate the possibilities of failure in the final system. Education should however provide a safe space for students to both innovate and to learn about and from failures. However, pressures on course designers and students can result in their adopting a conservative, and risk averse, approach to problem solving. The paper therefore considers the nature of both innovation and failure, and looks at how these might be effectively combined within mechatronics design education

Plasma sprayed titanium coatings with/without a shroud

Abstract: Titanium coatings were deposited by plasma spraying with and without a shroud. The titanium coatings were then assessed by scanning electron microscopy. A comparison in microstructure between titanium coatings with and without the shroud was carried out. The results showed that the shroud played an important role in protecting the titanium particles from oxidation. The presence of the shroud led to a reduction in coating porosity. The reduction in air entrainment with t he shroud resulted in better heating of the particles, and an enhanced microstructure with lower porosity in the shrouded titanium coatings were observed compared to the air plasma sprayed counterpart

Communication: key factor in multidisciplinary system design

System design research often looks at ways to model the system that is developing. Many modelling techniques and model representations exist. Another aspect these models can be used for is to enable, facilitate and improve communication among the developers during the process. The young System Design Group at the faculty of Engineering Technology of the University of Twente, the Netherlands, aims at focusing on this communication aspect in system design.\ud In the paper, a few finished and running projects undertaken in close cooperation with industry are described concisely. From these projects three research themes are derived. These are: creation of high-level models, combining model representations and condense information. The paper ends with plans for future research

Safe, Remote-Access Swarm Robotics Research on the Robotarium

This paper describes the development of the Robotarium -- a remotely accessible, multi-robot research facility. The impetus behind the Robotarium is that multi-robot testbeds constitute an integral and essential part of the multi-agent research cycle, yet they are expensive, complex, and time-consuming to develop, operate, and maintain. These resource constraints, in turn, limit access for large groups of researchers and students, which is what the Robotarium is remedying by providing users with remote access to a state-of-the-art multi-robot test facility. This paper details the design and operation of the Robotarium as well as connects these to the particular considerations one must take when making complex hardware remotely accessible. In particular, safety must be built in already at the design phase without overly constraining which coordinated control programs the users can upload and execute, which calls for minimally invasive safety routines with provable performance guarantees.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 3 code samples, 72 reference

Preparing Students for the Advanced Manufacturing Environment Through Robotics, Mechatronics, and Automation Training

Automation is one of the key areas for modern manufacturing systems. It requires coordination of different machines to support manufacturing operations in a company. Recent studies show that there is a gap in the STEM workforce preparation in regards to highly automated production environments. Industrial robots have become an essential part of these semi-automated and automated manufacturing systems. Their control and programming requires adequate education and training in robotics theory and applications. Various engineering technology departments offer different courses related to the application of robotics. These courses are a great way to inspire students to learn about science, math, engineering, and technology while providing them with workforce skills. However, some challenges are present in the delivery of such courses. One of these challenges includes the enrollment of students who come from different engineering departments and backgrounds. Such a multidisciplinary group of students can pose a challenge for the instructor to successfully develop the courses and match the content to different learning styles and math levels. To overcome that challenge, and to spark students\u27 interest, the certified education robot training can greatly support the teaching of basic and advanced topics in robotics, kinematics, dynamics, control, modeling, design, CAD/CAM, vision, manufacturing systems, simulation, automation, and mechatronics. This paper will explain how effective this course can be in unifying different engineering disciplines when using problem solving related to various important manufacturing automaton problems. These courses are focused on educational innovations related to the development of student competency in the use of equipment and tools common to the discipline, and associated curriculum development at three public institutions, in three different departments of mechanical engineering technology. Through these courses students make connections between the theory and real industrial applications. This aspect is especially important for tactile or kinesthetic learners who learn through experiencing and doing things. They apply real mathematical models and understand physical implications through labs on industrial grade robotic equipment and mobile robots

Application of LEGO Mindstorms Kits for Teaching Mechatronics Engineering

One of the major educators’ challenges is to teach the theoretical lessons with practical examples that can be taught in the classroom or teaching laboratories. The application of these examples will face a major problem for students in engineering: the difficulty of understanding and seeing how a mechatronic device works in everyday life. This requires the use of tools that enable the construction of different low cost prototypes to assist in student learning. Another challenge to educators is the need to motivate students during the lessons and to present models that students can make and develop on their own. Within this context this paper presents a pedagogic proposition based on the use of LEGO Mindstorms kits to teach practical lab activities in a mechatronics engineering course. The objective is to develop teaching methodologies with the use of these LEGO kits in order to motivate the students and also to promote a higher interdisciplinarity, by proposing projects that unify different disciplines. Thus, the paper is divided into three parts according to the educational experiences implemented in the course of mechatronics engineering at the Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil. The first part presents the use of the kits in robotics discipline. The second part presents the use of the virtual kits in the Computer Aided Design discipline with zero-cost. The third part presents a multi-disciplinary project EDROM in mechatronics using LEGO kits

3D sustainable renewable micro power station for smart grid industrial applications

The supply of clean energy and its security is becoming a global issue for all countries across the world, due to the limitations of fossil fuels resources usages for energy generations, the relative high dependency on imported fuels, their ever climbing prices and its environmental impacts. Power supply must increase as rapidly as demand to ensure sustained growth. This is the rationale upon which Governments, international organizations, researchers are accelerating investments in expanding the power system, its generation and transmission. This paper presents the preliminary research undertaken to design and develop a 3Dimentional (3D) sustainable renewable micro power station model for smart grid industrial applications. It introduces a solution to challenges in the energy generation sector which do not only refrain only to the safe supply of clean Energy. A major importance for the theoretical study of hybrid systems, based on renewable energy (photovoltaic, wind, hydro system) is the availability of the models that can be utilized to study the behavior of hybrid systems and most important, computer aided design simulation tools. As the available tools are quite limited, this paper would present the most current and up to date model which can be used for the simulation purposes of the 3D sustainable renewable micro power station for smart grid applications as well as for educational purposes

15 years of experience with mechatronics research and education

This paper describes the experiences with mechatronic research projects and several educational structures in the University of Twente since 1989. Education took place in a two-year Mechatronic Designer programme, in specialisations in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and in an (international) MSc programme. There are two-week mechatronic projects in the BSc curricula of EE and ME. Many of the PhD and MSc projects were done in projects sponsored by the industry or by application-oriented research programs. Research topics included modelling and simulation (learning) control, embedded systems and mechatronic design