Search on Mechatronic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Search on Mechatronic - Essay Example Mechatronics may also be referred to as "electromechanical systems" or less often as "control and automation engineering" (Wikipedia, 2007). Mechatronics meant a mechanism that is electrified until the early 1980s. Where as in the mid-1980s, mechatronics came to mean engineering that is the boundary between mechanics and electronics. In this 21st century, the term mechatronics encompasses a large array of technologies. However, each technology still has the basic element of the merging of mechanics and electronics but now it also may involve software and information technology (IEEE/ASME, 1998). For instance, many early robots resulted from mechatronics development. As robot systems became smarter, software development, in addition to the mechanical and electrical systems, became the main focus of mechatronics. To give some of the common examples where mechatronics systems are used include: the design of robots, washing machines, cameras, microwave, motor vehicles, DVD, etc. and other machines where an integrated engineering design is being adopted. Integration involves subjects such as mechanical, electrical, electronics and control engineering. In other words, mechatronics combines together areas of technology that involve sensors and measurement systems, drive and actuation systems, analysis of the behaviour of systems, control systems and microprocessor systems. In general a mechatronic system consists of the following basic items. The product or production process involves a mechanical structure containing actuators (generally it may be a motor to make things move), a microprocessor to control the overall operation of the system, sensors to allow the microprocessor to monitor the state of the system and electronics to connect the other parts together (fig 1). Mechatronics in the 1970s, was concerned by and large with servo technology used in