Fundamentals of Mechatronics

Description

Mechatronics has been popular in Japan and Europe for many years but has been slow to gain industrial and academic acceptance as a field and practice in Great Britain and the United States. In the past, machine and product design has been the domain of mechanical engineers. After the machine was designed by mechanical engineers, solutions to control and programming problems were added by software and computer engineers. This sequential-engineering approach usually resulted in less-than-optimal designs and is now recognized as less than optimal itself.The prime role of mechatronics is one of initiation and integration throughout the entire design process, with the mechatronics engineer as the leader. Experts in the interdisciplinary mechatronics field must acquire general knowledge of various techniques and be able to master the entire design process. They must be able to use the special knowledge resources of other people and the particular blend of technologies that will provide the most economic, innovative, elegant and appropriate solution to the problem at hand. Industry needs mechatronics engineers to continue to rapidly develop innovative products with performance, quality and low cost.