Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 877886

Mechatronics: from the 20th to 21st century

Masayoshi Tomizuka*
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Received 26 January 2001

Abstract This paper presents a Year-2000 (Y2K) status report of mechatronics. The Y2K denition of mechatronics is the synergetic integration of physical systems with information technology and complex-decision making in the design, manufacture and operation of industrial products and processes. Mechatronics may be interpreted as the best practice for synthesis of engineering systems, and it covers a broad area and scope. Vehicle lateral control for automated highway systems, hard disk drives and media handling mechanisms for printing engines are reviewed as examples of mechatronics research. Engineering students should be exposed to mechatronics and to the culture of working in teams. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Mechatronics; Modeling; Control; Mechanical systems; Vehicles

1. Introduction The term mechatronics, introduced in the late 1960s by Japans Yaskawa Electric Company, was derived from the observation of the synergy achieved through the integration of mechanical and electronic technologies (Harashima, Tomizuka, & Fukuda, 1996; Kyura & Oho, 1996). Yaskawa subsequently released trademark rights to the name and it has been used since in education and industry to describe systems derived from this heritage. Today, that heritage includes a broad variety of physical systems operating under computer and electronic control. The denition of mechatronics has evolved over the past three decades (Auslander, 1996). A Y2K denition of mechatronics may be The synergetic integration of physical systems with information technology (IT) and complex-decision making in the design, manufacture and operation of industrial products and processes. This denition emphasizes that IT will play an increasingly signicant role in mechatronics. IT in the mechatronics context includes computers and digital signal processors (DSPs), which store and process information, communications and the Internet, which transmit information, as well as various computer-aided design (CAD) software packages. On the other hand,
*Fax: 1-510-643-5599. E-mail address: tomizuka@me.berkeley.edu (M. Tomizuka).

complex-decision making includes methodologies such as feedback design theory, control theory, intelligent control, hybrid system theory and fault detection. Both the technological basis for IT and the knowledge basis for decision making have signicantly broadened over the last three decades, which has also enlarged the application domain of mechatronics. This is an evolutionary aspect of mechatronics, and is illustrated in Fig. 1. In particular, advances in communications such as the Internet and wireless communication have enlarged the range of mechatronic components from unit devices to large-scale distributed systems. Notice that we have used physical systems in the denition in place of mechanical systems to reect this point. Mechatronics may sound like an interdisciplinary area, but that classication is not right. We are surrounded by mechatronic products: e.g. camcorders, computer hard disk drives (HDDs), paper copiers, cruise control systems, etc. Mechatronics, however, does not refer only to products; it is much broader than that. This point has been made clear in the Y2K denition, which may also be interpreted as the best practice for synthesis by mechanical engineers and those in other engineering disciplines. In fact, a major driver of mechatronics comes from the needs of the industry. At a recent workshop on control education and research sponsored by the National Science Foundation, one industrial leader summarized general

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Discrete Event Theory Hybrid Systems Theory Fault Detection Soft-Computing Design Methodology Control Theory

Decision Making

7. environmental engineering, 8. manufacturing. Among these, the last ve areas suggest where signicant activities have been and will take place in the midstream as shown in Fig. 1, i.e. physical systems, as the 20th century ends and the 21st century begins. There have been visible mechatronics research activities in these areas, and some of them will be reviewed in the next section. On the other hand, the rst three areas may be understood as enabling technologies from the viewpoint of mechatronics. Microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has been a popular research area in recent years. This is consistent with the second area identied in the ASME report, miniaturization. It is also a rapidly growing industry, the size of which has exceeded $10 billion already, and millions of MEMS have been in products such as automotive air bags and ink jet printers (The New York Times, 2000). MEMS technology has been applied to develop tiny optical switches for handling high volumes of data and voice trafc in communications. MEMS itself is a wonderful example of mechatronics. As another measure that indicates the importance of miniaturization, the US Government invested $270 M in the year 2000 in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NSTC, 2000). Regarding the demographic change, the ASME report states, Demography is the second powerful force that is transforming the worlds economies and societies. In the next 40 years, the worlds human population is expected to grow by about 50%. y The baby boomers will enter advanced maturity and then old age. The report then touches several specic aspects including the trend in Europe and Japan that the population is rapidly aging. Although not discussed in the ASME report, this trend will motivate mechatronics for taking care of elderly people (e.g. nursing robots). Tanie (1999) calls it human friendly mechatronics.

Physical (Mechanical) Systems

Electronics

1970

1980

1990

2000

Micro-processors Computers CAD systems Local Networks Embedded Wireless Comm. DSP The Internet Information

Technology

Fig. 1. Evolution of mechatronics.

trends in the industry with the following points (Masten, 1998): (1) knowledge is king, (2) innovation is essential, (3) cost: what is new today becomes a commodity tomorrow, (4) products are becoming more complex and system based with higher performance, (5) short design cycles are more common, (6) markets are increasingly global and more competitive, and (7) design teams are a preferred approach. Mechatronics offers the best practice to meet these challenges. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we will examine some key trends in the 21st century that will affect engineering. These trends are not necessarily new. In Section 3, we will review on-going research projects which exhibit many aspects of mechatronics. We will comment on mechatronics from the viewpoint of education in Section 4. Conclusions will be given in Section 5.

2. Mechanical engineering in the 21st century The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recently published a report entitled Mechanical Engineering in the 21st Century: Trends Impacting the Profession prepared by the Hudson Institute, Inc. (1999). Its contents are highly relevant to the evolution of mechatronics from the 20th to 21st century. It describes the trends of change in engineering in the following four categories: technological change, demographic change, economic change and social change. In terms of technological change, the following eight areas are identied to impact (mechanical) engineering in major ways: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. information technology, miniaturization, materials science, bioengineering and medicine, energy, transportation,

3. MechatronicsFresearch opportunities It was mentioned that a major driver of mechatronics is the needs of industry, and that mechatronics offers the best practice. This does not mean that mechatronics refers only to how things should be done in the development of products by various industries. In fact, mechatronics provides a number of interesting research topics to university researchers. Mechatronics research in academia should be at the forefront of any existing elds (e.g. transportation, biomedical, and so on) or even dene a new eld. It should yet remain relevant to industries. Such industries may be existing, or yet to be formed in response to the need of society. In this section,

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we describe research opportunities for researchers primarily in dynamic systems and control. 3.1. Modern mechatronic system and research opportunities Fig. 2 shows a block diagram of modern mechatronic systems. It looks like a typical block diagram found in control textbooks with the two additional blocks: humanmachine interfaces and link to other systems. Note that we have placed the computation block in the middle to emphasize that the computer plays the central role in modern mechatronic systems. This block may represent a variety of hardware devices such as programmable logic controllers, DSPs, embedded micro-controllers and their combinations as well as software that realizes decision-making algorithms. Mechatronics research should start with a clear idea on the target physical system. In other words, mechatronics research should not be methodology driven. A technical paper on a new control methodology with an illustrative example may be a ne contribution to technical journals on controls, but most likely will not be appropriate for mechatronics journals. Having said this, many research topics addressed by researchers in the area of dynamic systems and control are relevant to and of critical importance to mechatronics. For example, the following research topics address important aspects in the development of engineering systems and are relevant to mechatronics.
* * *

* *

robust control without high-gain nature for prolonged actuator life and minimized vibration, control with low-frequency output measurements, simultaneous design of control algorithms and fault detection algorithms.

modeling and identication of dynamic systems, simple yet reliable tuning of robust controllers, comparison of various control methods in terms of performance and implementation costs including complexity,
Link to Other Systems The Internet, wireless communication Human-Mach. Interface human factors

Isermann (1997) presents a forceful argument that the development of mechatronic systems is a real challenge for control engineering. If we consider mechatronics from the view point of concurrent engineering (Van Brussel, 1996), the mechatronics nature of research becomes more apparent when the consideration on control algorithms is coupled with the selection and placement of sensors and/or even the design of target physical (mechanical) systems. MEMS is relevant to this because it is a technology for co-location of sensors and actuators, which often makes the controller design easy. Fig. 3 summarizes the activities of Mechanical Systems Control Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering department of the University of California at Berkeley. The laboratory has worked on a variety of mechanical systems to study the role and utilization of control methodologies. It should be noted in the gure that balloons for application areas and the control theory balloon are connected by lines with arrows on both ends. Motivations for developing new ideas in the control theory balloon have their origins in problems encountered in specic application. Repetitive control (Tomizuka, Tsao, & Chew, 1989) is such an example. The development of the discrete time repetitive control theory was motivated by noncircular machining (Tsao & Tomizuka, 1994) as well as disk le control to compensate for the eccentricity of data tracks on the disk relative to the center of disk rotation (Messner, Kempf, Tomizuka, & Horowitz, 1993). The zero phase error tracking control (ZPETC) (Tomizuka, 1987) was

Computers/DSP decision making

Vehicles automated steering suspension systems traction control Control Theory adaptive control nonlinear control digital control
...

Information Storage Devices hard disk drives CD drives

Instrumentation energy conversion signal conditioning

Actuation power modulation

robots machining center x-y table paper copier

Physical Systems mechanical, electrical, etc. and their combinations

Fig. 2. Modern mechatronic system.

motors linear motors inverted pendulum

Fig. 3. Control of mechanical systems.

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conceived as a simple means to realize feedforward control for x2y tables and other motion control devices. Almost all research projects in the laboratory have analytical and experimental components. This style of research naturally evolves into control oriented mechatronics research. 3.2. Mechatronic projectsFexamples In this section, we will review three research projects, each of which has some distinctive mechatronics nature. 3.2.1. Automated steering systems for vehicles on automated highways The California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highway (PATH) Programs was established in 1986 to promote the application of advanced technology to help meet Californias growing need for increased highway capacity to relieve congestion. The idea of automated highway systems (AHS) was identied as an attractive option for solving the congestion problem while improving the operation of highways in many respects including safety, fuel economy and pollution. AHS research has been a major part of the PATH program. AHS is one form of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). As identied in the ASME report, transportation is of critical importance in the 21st century. Each vehicle on the automated highway must be equipped with the longitudinal and the lateral controller. The longitudinal controller maintains the distance (or time headway) between one vehicle and another in front of it at a desired value by manipulating the engine output and the brake force. The lateral controller provides the automated steering capability and it ensures that the vehicle is kept on a specied lane. From the viewpoint of mechatronics, AHS is an excellent case of system integration incorporating items in Fig. 1 and other items. Vehicle longitudinal and lateral controls are sub-problems in AHS, but they include a number of mechatronics issues such as system integration, advanced controls, communications and selection of sensors for better controllability and fault management. In vehicle lateral control for AHS, it is critically important how the vehicles position and orientation relative to the road are measured or obtained. Various road reference/sensing systems have been proposed in the past for this purpose. PATH adopted the magnetic marker (nail) system with on-board magnetometers. In this method, magnets are buried at equally spaced intervals along the automated lane. PATH researchers developed robust signal processing schemes for obtaining the lateral error, as well as, encoding schemes to embed other types of information such as preview road curvature information in binary form by alternating the polarity of the magnets. Furthermore, it compares

favorably with other schemes in terms of evaluation criteria such as accuracy, reliability, maintainability, and cost. The road reference-sensing system based on magnetic markers is a look-down system. If the magnetometer is placed under the front bumper, the system allows only a small amount of look-ahead relative to the center of gravity of the vehicle. On the other hand, the vision camera denes a look-ahead system with an ample amount of look ahead. The nature of the open loop dynamics from the steering input to the sensor output makes feedback control design easier when the sensor is placed ahead of the vehicle, say by 5 m, to allow an ample look-ahead distance. It is not practical to place a real magnetometer say 5 m ahead of the vehicle. Thus, PATH researchers devised an interesting mechatronics solution for realizing a larger look-ahead distance based on multiple magnetometers. They installed magnetometers under both the front and rear bumpers, i.e. the lateral error at the front bumper, ys ; and at the rear bumper, yr ; were measured (see Fig. 4). Under the assumption that the road is straight, front and rear magnetometer measurements are converted to the lateral error at the tractors CG and the relative yaw error by yr lr1 ysf lf 1 ysr ; lf 1 lr1 ysf ysr ysf ysr E ; lf 1 lr1 lf 1 lr1

er tan1

where l1 ; l2 ; ysf ; ysr and gr are as dened in Fig. 4. These two quantities can be combined to synthesize the lateral error at the virtual sensor located at any distance ahead of the vehicle. This makes it possible to allow the lookdown system based on magnetic markers behave like a look-ahead system, i.e. yv yr dv e r : PATH has developed a variety of algorithms based on the magnetic reference systems (Peng & Tomizuka, 1993; Patwardhan, Tan, & Guldner, 1997) leading to the successful demonstration at the 1997 National

Fig. 4. Error sensing by front and rear sensors.

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Fig. 5. PATH Platoon demonstration (NAHSC demonstration in San Diego, 1997).

Automated Highway Systems Consortium (NAHSC) Demonstration in San Diego in 1997 (Fig. 5). The sensing scheme described above was a critical element in the success of the demonstration, which reminds us that the design of control systems is not merely a selection of control algorithms but is a synergistic integration of a variety of elements such as sensors, actuators and control algorithms. The current research on the automated steering system at PATH emphasizes heavy vehicles such as tractortrailer combinations and commuter busses. The experimental vehicle is a Freightliner FLD120 class 8 tractor and a Great Dane trailer (Hingwe, Tai, Wang, & Tomizuka, 1999). Fig. 6 shows the instrumentation on the experimental vehicle. The gure suggests the mechatronics nature involved in this problem. In particular, it is noted that three sets of magnetometers are placed on the vehicle at the front and rear ends of the tractor and the rear end of the trailer. Also the independent trailer brake actuators act as a secondary input for lateral control. At curved sections of highways, the tractors front wheel and the trailers rear wheel follow different paths, which is known as off-tracking. The amount of off-tracking depends on the vehicle speed, and it must be taken into consideration in lateral control. Thus, the lateral control problem is not merely to keep the sensor output at zero. Linear robust control algorithms and nonlinear adaptive control algorithms have been developed for the Freightliner test vehicle, and their effectiveness has been experimentally demonstrated. In vehicle control, the interaction between the road and tires, which generates the lateral force for vehicle to turn, is very complex, and the advantages of adaptive control have been pointed out by analysis and simulations. Another emphasis in the current research at PATH is on failure detection and fault tolerant control. The failure detection and fault management has been studied

Fig. 6. Sensors and actuators for lateral control: (1) front magnetometer array, (2) steering actuator, (3) computer, (4) gyroscope and accelerometer, (5) rear magnetometer array, (6) articulation angle sensor, (7) gyroscope and accelerometer, (8) trailer magnetometer array, (9) tractor front braking actuators, (10) tractor rear braking actuator, (11) independent trailer braking actuators, (12) steering wheel angle sensor.

at PATH for some time, since safety is an important issue in any automated system. This has also been a motivation for our recent study on fault tolerant lateral control systems for AHS (Suryanarayanan, Tomizuka, & Suzuki, 2000). 3.2.2. Computer HDDs Magnetic HDDs are representative mechatronics devices (Messner & Horowitz, 1998). Fig. 7 shows a 3.500 HDD. The HDD industry is striving for higher aereal storage density, higher data transfer rate and lower cost. The aereal data storage density of commercial drives has been increasing at a rate 60% per year. Since the rst disk drive was introduced in 1957, the data storage density has increased by a factor of 5,000,000. There are a number of amazing technologies involved in disk drives. The slider, on which the recording head is mounted, ies over a rotating disk at a height of about 20 nm. This is analogous to a Boeing 747 ying at an altitude of o1 mm. The small ying height is required to maximize the storage density. The number of data tracks per radial length is currently about 2030 K tracks per inch (TPI). TPI is expected to double by end of this year. HDD can now store date at unbelievable densities exceeding 10 gigabits per square inch. Researchers are now looking into a variety of new technologies (Taigo, 2000). There are several different ways to increase the data transfer rate. Both the disk rotational speed and the track seeking time are

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single actuator technology will reach its fundamental limit. To prepare for this situation, the dual stage actuator is receiving an increased level of attention in the disk drive industry (Ohtsuki, Mori, Munemoto, & Akagi, 1992; Schroceck & Messner, 1999; Ding, Tomizuka, & Numasato, 2000). The majority of dual stage actuators utilize the conventional voice coil motor primary stage and a piezoelectric secondary stage. MEMS offers an alternative option for second stage actuation (Horsley, Horowitz, & Pisano, 1998). 3.2.3. Media handling mechanisms for printing engines A signicant amount of the dissatisfaction with current printers and copiers is associated with malfunctions in their media handling system. In typical copiers, papers must travel along the paper path from the feeder to the nisher making many turns and going through nip rollers. There is essentially no feedback control of paper motions except at the nal printing stage. The lack of control often results in the so-called soft jam. If a sheet does not arrive at a checking station as expected, the machine is automatically shut down. In an NSFsponsored project entitled Mechatronic Design and Control of Media Handling Mechanisms for Printing Engines the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and Xerox are jointly studying the integration of sensing, control and decision-making methodologies in the mechanical design and the real-time control of copying machines. Fig. 8 shows a bench xture built for studying feedback control of paper motions along the paper path. The unique feature of this set-up is that an independent motor is placed at each section of the paper path. This added exibility enables independent position control of sheets in different sections by running the sections at different velocities. Additional optical sensors and encoders are used to improve the sheet

Fig. 7. HDD unite: (1) voice coil motor, (2) actuator pivot, (3) actuator arm, (4) read/write (recording) head, (5) data track, (6) spindle motor axis.

important. Access time, which depends on these two factors, has been improved by a factor of 3 during the past ten years. The importance of the servo control is easy to recognize. The current disk drives use the so-called sector servo method. In this method, the disk is divided into angular sections (sectors) and servo information is written at every sector. The recording head reads the position error signal (PES) once in each sector. A challenge in the design of these systems is to minimize the number of sectors (equivalently the sampling rate), while continuing to meet tracking performance requirements. There has been a number of interesting control ideas introduced to disk le controls. Repetitive control is such an idea (Tomizuka et al., 1989). In standard digital control, the control input is updated at every instant of output (error) measurement. This standard scheme is called the single rate scheme. The updating rate of control input, however, can be more frequent than the measurementsampling rate. Such control methods belong to multirate control, and several kinds of multirate control have been proposed for HDDs (Chiang, 1990; Kobayashi et al., 1998; Hara & Tomizuka, 1999). A multirate approach has also been suggested to decrease the implementation cost of repetitive control (Smith, Takeuchi, & Tomizuka, 1999). PES is the major information source in the disk drive servo system. There have been several attempts to improve performance by utilizing information from additional sensors. Accelerometers have shown to improve the track following performance by canceling the effect of external vibration on PES (White & Tomizuka, 1997) and eliminating the effect of pivot friction (Ishikawa & Tomizuka, 1998). The design of a high-bandwidth disk drive servo system using a suspension instrumented with strain gauge sensors is described in Huang, Banther, Mathur, and Messner (1999). As TPI increases every year, it is expected that the current

Fig. 8. Experimental set-up for paper motion control.

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position estimates. The increased level of exibility naturally leads to a more complicated machine. From a control theoretical point of view, the overall system becomes a hybrid system: it is a dynamical system in the usual sense but changes its conguration as well as operation principles at discrete points in time. It is an excellent mechatronics project. Details of the experimental setup along with some simulation and experimental results are given in Kruchinski, Cloet, Horowitz, and Tomizuka (2000). 3.2.4. Other research areas There are a number of other research areas where mechatronics thinking is extremely important. They include but are not limited to robotics and automation, manufacturing, biomedical engineering, energy and the environment, and large-scale structures such as bridges and buildings. There is no question that robots represent a challenging area from the mechatronics point of view, and most compelling examples of mechatronics are often found in the robotics area. In fact, many challenging problems such as design and construction of light weight robots (e.g. DLR Lightweight Robot, www.robotic.dlr.de), intelligent robotics and robotic surgery require mechatronic approaches. Mechatronics has been and will be playing an important role in the area of medicine and surgery (Hewit, 1995; Cavsoglu, Tendick, Cohn, & Sastry, 1999). For example, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is a revolutionary approach in surgery. In MIS, the surgery is performed with instruments and viewing equipment inserted into the body through small incisions, minimizing the surgical trauma and damage to the healthy tissue. It is a telesurgery similar to a remote operation for handling hazardous materials. While MIS results in shorter patient recovery time, there are a number of research issues associated with reduced dexterity, workspace, and sensory input to the surgeon that is only available through a monoscopic video image (Cavsoglu, Tendick, Cohn, & Sastry, 1999). MIS denes a humanmachine system, and the block diagram of a typical telesurgical workstation resembles the diagram in Fig. 2. In a recent article in Business Week, Port (2000) states Mechanical body parts could someday make disabilities irrelevant in the workplace. Articial organs (and projected dates of availability) compiled in the article include articial-vision brain implants (2001), permanent mechanical heart implants (2010), lungs and kidneys (2015), synthetic muscles (2019), and articial eye implants (2024). These biomedical applications show that the human body may be an important component of mechatronic systems or that the human and mechatronic devices interact in synergistic ways. The interface between human and machine relies on the

humans ve senses, among which visual and haptic are most popular. In particular, research on haptics has expanded and branched out in new directions such as real-time transmission and display of haptic information. Another interesting integration of human and machine is studied at the Human Engineering Laboratory at UC Berkeley (http://www.me.berkeley.edu/hel/). The members of this laboratory carry out research efforts on design and control of a class of robot manipulators worn by humans to augment human mechanical strength, while the wearers intellect remains the central control system for manipulating the robot. The key point in their systems is the exchange of both information signals and physical power. A recent accomplishment of this group was the development of a machine that successfully maneuvered heavy loads in isolated areas for extended periods of time (Neuhaus & Kazerooni, 2000). Human is involved in the operation of this machine. As we look into the next decade, we may predict several natural trends based on the ASME report. We may safely state that mechatronics in the 21st century will heavily depend on information technology and miniaturization. Such technology will make it possible to provide remote monitoring of home appliances, automobiles and elderly or handicapped people.

4. MechatronicsFeducational challenges Engineering education is facing challenges in the midst of rapid progress of information technology. In terms of starting salaries offered by industries to new graduates, computer science (CS) has been the leader at all levels (BS, MS and Ph.D.) for some years. High school students often do not have a clear idea of what they want to do. Often their decisions are based on conversation with parents, older relatives or friends, which combined with headline news on IT, motivates many of them to send applications specifying computer science. At the University of California at Berkeley, our current experience is that nearly 50% of undergraduate applications to the Engineering College are concentrated in CS. In Berkeleys Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department, the ratio of undergraduate enrollment was two EE students for every CS student a decade ago. This ratio has been reversed and it is now two CS students for every EE student. The popularity of CS is not a new phenomenon. In the 1980s, CS once attracted many applications. At that time, many universities struggled to keep up with the demand for computer science courses to provide students with knowledge about programing languages, operating systems and computer architecture. This boom did not last for a long time. CS graduates with programming skills were not necessarily appreciated by

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industry executives either. No fundamental curricula revision, however, was considered at that time to respond to the need of industries. The strong application demand from students and the strong supply demand from all segments of industries that universities are currently facing in IT are more than a temporary boom. Educators have recognized that engineering curricula must be revised in fundamental ways so that universities may supply leaders to advance IT and professionals to apply IT in various industries (Wilson, 1998). Lee and Messerschmit (1998) state: We believe that the center of gravity of most undergraduate curricula today is too far on the side of attempting to train the small cadre of technical experts, a hopeless task within a four-or-ve-year program. Because of the hopelessness of the task, we cram too much content into the program, thinking it makes it better (and somehow less hopeless). This shuts out other fundamental knowledge that we believe will be extremely valuable to them in their design careers. Students have been seriously shortchanged by not understanding the big picture. We advocate an alternative vision in which the undergraduate program focuses on a limited and carefully chosen set of core ideas, supplemented by real-world examples and importantly by student selfexploration and learning. Such an undergraduate program also emphasizes breadth, an exposure to a range of technical issues, as well as mathematics, science, humanities, and social sciences. In a eld as dynamic as ours, no set of vocational skills has any signicant longevity. It is far more important that our graduates be bright, curious, intellectual, and unafraid of leaning new things. This statement is highly relevant when we talk about mechatronics education. Craig (1998) states: In mechatronics, balance is paramount. The essential characteristic of a mechatronics engineer and the key to success in mechatronics is a balance between two skills:
*

In fact, the points made by Craig and Carryer are important in engineering education. Every undergraduate student in mechanical and electrical engineering as well as in other engineering disciplines should be trained so that they can effectively utilize IT tools along with their analytical skills to solve engineering system problems. Effective communication with others is a necessary requirement. Furthermore, students should be trained to be forward looking and curious. Issues surrounding integration as well as working in team cannot be taught in lecture courses. Students must experience them, and in this regard laboratory courses are essential in mechatronics education. At the UCB, a senior level course on mechanical engineering design has been converted into a new course on mechatronics design. During a 15-week period, the course covers microcontrollers, real-time software, electric motors, pneumatics and hydraulics, transmission systems, brakes and clutches, power electronics, bearings, and sensors. The course ends with the inventors open house, where students present their projects. For projects, students normally work in a group of three to four. Feedback control is not a prerequisite for the course, but projects are often quite sophisticated involving feedback control. Project titles from recent offering of the course include automatic bicycle gear shifter, automated rice cooker, and walking robots. Figs. 9 and 10 present several examples of laboratory sessions from a UCBs graduate course on switching control and computer interfacing. At the graduate level, in particular doctorate students should be exposed to a broad spectrum of fundamental theories such as control theory. Fundamentals are fundamental (Masten, 1998) is important for future academic and industrial leaders. As stated already, many high-school students have a simple equation Information Technology=Computer Science Department, and they do not realize how other

modeling (physical and mathematical), analysis (closed form and numerical simulation), and control design (analog and digital) of dynamic physical systems, experimental validation of models and analysis (for computer simulation without experimental verication is at best questionable, and at worst useless) and understanding the key issues in hardware implementation of designs.
Fig. 9. Working on the milling machine (picture: courtesy of Professor D. Auslander).

Carryer (1998) emphasizes integration. While these comments are not necessarily fresh, they are all essential.

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Fig. 10. Automatic train loading (picture: courtesy of Professor D. Auslander).

engineering disciplines are changing with IT. In this regard, the role of educators must go beyond how mechatronics should be taught. It is important that we direct the attention of high-school students and college freshmen and sophomores to the exciting eld of mechatronics. At the UCB, the College of Engineering admits a good number of freshmen under category of undeclared major. They decide their majors when they are advanced to the junior level. Freshman seminar courses are intended to expose newly admitted students to a variety of engineering disciplines. Incorporating mechatronics avors to such presentations makes any engineering discipline more attractive to undergraduate students.

5. Conclusions The paper emphasized the evolution of mechatronics, and described the opportunities and challenges in mechatronics research and education. Mechatronics is essential as the best industrial practice in todays global and competitive market. At the same time, mechatronic thinking forms the basics of the modern engineering education. The mechatronics approach is particularly relevant in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. Faculty members specializing in control and design must act as leaders to bring mechatronics into the engineering curriculum.

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