6.3 Mechatronics and Modern Engineering
Many engineering problems can be formulated, attacked, and solved using the mechatronic paradigm. Mechatronics deals with benchmarking and emerging problems in integrated electrical–mechanical– computer engineering, science, and technologies. Many of these problems have not been attacked and solved; and sometimes, the existing solutions cannot be treated as the optimal one. This reflects obvious trends in fundamental, applied, and experimental research as well as curriculum changes in response to long-standing unsolved problems, engineering and technological enterprise, and entreaties of steady evolutionary demands.
Mechatronics is the integrated design, analysis, optimization, and virtual prototyping of intelligent and high-performance electromechanical systems, system intelligence, learning, adaptation, decision making, and control through the use of advanced hardware (actuators, sensors, microprocessors, DSPs, power electronics, and ICs) and leading-edge software.
Integrated multidisciplinary features approach quickly, as documented in Fig. 6.2. The mechatronic paradigm, which integrates electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering, takes place.
The structural complexity of mechatronic systems has increased drastically due to hardware and software advancements, as well as stringent achievable performance requirements. Answering the demands of rising electromechanical system complexity, performance specifications, and intelligence, the mechatronic paradigm was introduced. In addition to the proper choice of electromechanical system components and subsystems, there are other issues which must be addressed in view of the constantly evolving nature of the electromechanical systems theory (e.g., analysis, design, modeling, optimization, complexity, intelligence, decision making, diagnostics, packaging). Competitive optimum-performance electromechanical systems must be designed within the advanced hardware and software concepts.
6.4 Design of Mechatronic Systems
One of the most challenging problems in mechatronic systems design is the system architecture synthesis, system integration, optimization, as well as selection of hardware (actuators, sensors, power electronics, ICs, microcontrollers, and DSPs) and software (environments, tools, computation algorithms to perform control, sensing, execution, emulation, information flow, data acquisition, simulation, visualization, virtual prototyping, and evaluation). Attempts to design state-of-the-art high-performance mechatronic systems and to guarantee the integrated design can be pursued through analysis of complex patterns and paradigms of evolutionary developed biological systems. Recent trends in engineering have increased the emphasis on integrated analysis, design, and control of advanced electromechanical systems. The scope of mechatronic systems has continued to expand, and, in addition to actuators, sensors, power electronics, ICs, antennas, microprocessors, DSPs, as well as input/output devices, many other subsystems must be integrated. The design process is evolutionary in nature. It starts with a given set of requirements and specifications. High-level functional design is performed first in order to produce detailed design at the subsystem and component level. Using the advanced subsystems and components, the initial design is performed, and the closed-loop electromechanical system performance is tested against the requirements. If requirements and specifications are not met, the designer revises or refines the system architecture, and other solutions are sought. At each level of the design hierarchy, the system performance in the behavioral domain is used to evaluate and refine the design process and solution devised. Each level of the design hierarchy corresponds to a particular abstraction level and has the specified set of activities and design tools that support the design at this level. For example, different criteria are used to design actuators and ICs due to different behavior, physical properties, operational principles, and performance criteria imposed for these components. It should be emphasized that the level of hierarchy must be defined, e.g., there is no need to study the behavior of millions of transistors on each IC chip because mechatronic systems integrate hundreds of ICs, and the end-to-end behavior of ICs is usually evaluated (ICs are assumed to be optimized, and these ICs are used as ready-to-use components). The design flow is illustrated in Fig. 6.3.
Automated synthesis can be attained to implement this design flow. The design of mechatronic systems is a process that starts from the specification of requirements and progressively proceeds to perform a functional design and optimization that is gradually refined through a sequence of steps. Specifications typically include the performance requirements derived from systems functionality, operating envelope, affordability, and other requirements. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches should be combined to design high-performance mechatronic systems augmenting hierarchy, integ-rity, regularity, modularity, compliance, and completeness in the synthesis process. Even though the basic foundations have been developed, some urgent areas have been downgraded, less emphasized, and researched. The mechatronic systems synthesis reported guarantees an eventual consensus between behavioral and structural domains, as well as ensures descriptive and integrative features in the design. These were achieved applying the mechatronic paradigm which allows one to extend and augment the results of classical mechanics, electromagnetics, electric machinery, power electronics, microelectronics, informatics, and control theories, as well as to apply advanced integrated hardware and software.
To acquire and expand the engineering core, there is the need to augment interdisciplinary areas as well as to link and place the multidisciplinary perspectives integrating actuators–sensors–power elec-tronics–ICs–DSPs to attain actuation, sensing, control, decision making, intelligence, signal processing, and data acquisition. New developments are needed. The theory and engineering practice of high-performance electromechanical systems should be considered as the unified cornerstone of the engineering curriculum through mechatronics. The unified analysis of actuators and sensors (e.g., electromechanical motion devices), power electronics and ICs, microprocessors and DSPs, and advanced hardware and software, have barely been introduced into the engineering curriculum. Mechatronics, as the break-through concept in the design and analysis of conventional-, mini-, micro- and nano-scale electro-mechanical systems, was introduced to attack, integrate, and solve a great variety of emerging problems.