Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering: a Progress Report, and Future Directions for Mechatronics Education1

Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering: A Progress Report, and Future Directions for Mechatronics Education1 Yusuf Altintas, Professor, Program Coordinator Elizabeth A. Croft2, Assistant Professor, Co-coordinator Department of Mechanical Engineering The University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4 CANADA http://www.mech.ubc.ca/Programs/ElectroMech/index.html [email protected] or [email protected] Abstract The Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering program has been in place as a five-year combined interdisciplinary program in mechanical and electronics engineering at the University of British Columbia since 1994. The students take almost all mechanical and most of the core electronics engineering courses during the first four years. They spend at least two four-month-long summer terms in industry as cooperative education students, where they receive training in practical design, drafting, manufacturing and instrumentation. The fifth year is dedicated to the complete design and manufacturing of a computer controlled machine in industry. Teams of two students design the complete mechanical system with actuators, sensors and computer control units under the joint supervision of a faculty member and a qualified engineer designated by the sponsoring company. Upon the completion and testing of the full electro-mechanical machine and four graduate courses, the students receive a Bachelor and Master of Engineering in Electro-Mechanical Engineering. The Electro-Mechanical students receive academic and 1 This article is revised and expanded from a paper to be presented at the 1999 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM ’99), Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 19-22, 1999. 2 To whom correspondence should be directed. industrial training in mechanical, electronics and software engineering, and are in high demand in industry and academia upon graduation. The present status and future of this program, including the proposed expansion of the program to the M.A.Sc. Degree (currently under faculty review), is discussed. Key words: Mechatronics, Engineering Education, Machine Design, Co-operative Education. 1. Introduction Present mechanical systems include electrical or hydraulic actuators controlled by high- powered electrical and low powered electronic units. The overall system is generally interfaced to an industrial computer, utilizing a real time operating system accommodating control, monitoring and human-machine interface software. The performance of the machine may be monitored or improved by mounting sensors on the system, processing the measured signals in real time within the computer, and sending commands to actuators to improve the machine performance. In short, a Mechatronics System Design engineer must posses the knowledge in mechanical design and structures, electrical motors and power amplifiers, analog and digital electronics, automatic controls, computer architecture, and real time software engineering areas. Current engineering curriculums split the mentioned areas into at least two or three independent disciplines; namely, mechanical, electrical and computer engineering. When the three main disciplines are taught independently, the design of a full electro-mechanical system requires two or three engineers who received separate training in classical mechanical, electrical and/or computer engineering. However, an engineer, who received essential training in all three disciplines with a focus on electro-mechanical design engineering, can handle the complete engineering task alone 2 in a more efficient, creative and unified manner. Although such an education can be called Mechatronics Engineering, the authors prefer to use Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering where the focus is computer-controlled machine design. Mechatronics typically covers wider range of disciplines including physics and optics. 1.1 Program Origins The first author has been conducting research in design of Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC) systems for machine tools since 1986. At that time, he initiated a course in Computer-Aided Manufacturing (MECH491) [1]. This course covered basic digital interfacing, in particular, real time linear and circular trajectory generation algorithms, as well as digital control law programming in assembler using Motorola MC68000 educational boards interfaced to three axis miniature milling machine driven by dc servomotors. Most of the components of the complete system were designed and tested, and the students were asked to complete missing real time functions and minor interfaces. The course was taught in this form with intensive computer interfacing and real time components until 1993. With the support of the mechanical engineering department, a separate mandatory course (EECE 485, Digital Instrumentation for Mechanical Systems) in digital logic design, introductory level real time software engineering and digital interfacing was developed in cooperation with the Department of Electrical Engineering. This course has been taught by Electrical Engineering as a service course for our department. The predecessor of the course was given under APSC 380 by Prof. P. Lawrence, who published a text and pioneered the movement at UBC [2]. The first author continues to teach MECH 491, but with more emphasis on designing real time trajectory generation, sensors and digital control systems for computer controlled machines [3]. 3 Mechanical engineering students who completed a suite of electives including MECH 491, MECH 462(Finite Element Analysis)), and MECH 457 (Final Year Design Project) were given a Computer Aided Automation (CAA) designation on their degree. The first author proposed a formal five-year Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering education at the University of British Columbia in 1992. After a year of deliberation and fine-tuning of the curriculum in cooperation with the Department of Electrical Engineering, the Faculty of Applied Science and the University Senate approved the program in early 1994. Electro-Mechanical Design option is generally different than the Mechatronics initiatives seen in North American universities. Some universities teach basic components of mechatronics systems in one or two mechanical engineering courses [4,5,6,7]. Usually, an interested faculty or a team of faculty members teach basic digital interfacing, assembler programming and application of digital control techniques to several laboratory set-ups, similar to the EECE 485/MECH 491 courses described above. Stanford University has a very active “smart product design” program which consist of two to three graduate courses in software engineering and computer interfacing, accompanied by a smart or mechatronics product design [8]. The smart product design program is geared more toward graduate education. Although such programs do not provide detailed foundation of electronics and computer engineering, they require less logistics in implementing the introductory level mechatronics education in engineering faculties. 4 2 Current Program Description Electro-Mechanical Design Engineering is an interdisciplinary, joint program with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Departments at UBC. The students take almost entire core courses in mechanical engineering, and about 60% of electronics engineering during the first four years. The students spend two summer terms in industry during the second and third year, and spend one full year in designing an industrial-size, computer-controlled machine or product in the fifth year. At the end of year five, the students receive both bachelor and master of engineering. Because of resource limitations, usually only ten students are accepted to EMEC program per year. UBC has two teaching terms (September-December; January - April) and a non-teaching summer term (May-August). Students from the second year mechanical engineering class are invited to apply to EMEC program. The students must have at least 76% grade point average. Two faculty members (the authors) interview each eligible applicant for a period of fifteen minutes. The students are encouraged to bring their creative designs, drafting samples, hobbies, electronic and software products to the interview. Each student receives various questions about their recreational activities, work experience, habits, artistic or musical skills. The social questions are used to see whether the student has an ability to communicate and work in a peaceful and professional manner in an industrial setting. The interviewers then start asking the students to describe how machines that the students are interested in (robot arm, car engine, printer) are built and controlled; that is, how the mechanical, electronic, the computer and software components are linked. The student is asked to list the necessary courses and relate them to different activity in robot design and 5 control. The questions are geared toward understanding whether the student has done some initial investigation about the EMEC option, and has some aptitude, interest and practical ability for electro-mechanical design. Usually, out of approximately thirty eligible applicants, we accept ten students who demonstrate high academic standing, strong motivation, and an evident talent in mechanical system design. The selected students must maintain 76% or higher grade point average in years two to four, and failure is not allowed. Students who do not maintain the set academic standards, can still graduate by dropping to a Bachelor of Engineering version of the program (CAA

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