Mechatronics: Blended Engineering for the Robotic Future

The concept of mechatronics has long been associated with the robotics industry. The term was coined in 1971 by Tetsuro Mori, an engineer at robotics company, Yaskawa Electric Corp. He combined the words "mechanical" and "electronic" to describe the electronic control systems that Yaskawa was building for mechanical factory equipment. The term now describes an emerging engineering discipline that includes a coherent background in systems design as well as mechanics and electronics.

The term is now common in many university engineering departments, with many colleges issuing degrees in mechatronic engineering. “Mechatronics is what computer engineering was 15 years ago. People are talking about it and realizing its value of this field of engineering,” said Jim Devaprasad, professor in the School of Engineering and Technology at Lake Superior State University. “Mechatronics encompasses mechanical, electrical, and some manufacturing all put together.”

The Association of Mechanical Engineers has embraced the concept, stating that mechatronics systems are everywhere, from computer hard drives to robotic assembly systems. They note that even consumer products combine mechanical and electronic systems now, from washing machines and coffee makers to medical devices. Just What Is Mechatronics?

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The automotive industry leans heavily on mechatronics, as well. Electronics that control mechanical systems account for much of the value of new vehicles. These systems manage everything from stability control and antilock brakes to climate control and memory-adjustment seats.

In its essence, mechatronic engineering involves creating smart machines that are aware of their surroundings and can make decisions. While this seems like the perfect definition of a robot, smart machines also involve equipment that does not look robotic yet behaves like a robot in that it can be programmed to conduct specific movements that accomplish goals. A programmed conveyor belt can be a smart programmable machine – a robot.

These smart machines are complex equipment made up of several parts: the mechanical system itself, the sensing and actuation, the control systems, and the software. Developing and operating these intelligent machines involves the full range of disciplines included in mechatronics.

What Do Mechatronic Engineers Do?

Mechatronic engineers work in all aspects of the development of the smart machine – from design and testing through to manufacture and ultimately deployment of an operation. The industries involved include robotics, medical equipment and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, manufacturing, unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, and education.

Mechatronic engineers work at companies that require high-tech development into what they are producing. These engineers may work in a laboratory, a processing plant, or an engineering office. Research opportunities for mechatronics engineers abound in emerging fields like bioengineering, nanotechnology, and robotics. These engineers are playing a large role in the development of electric cars and self-driving vehicles.

You will find mechatronic engineers in the defense industry developing futuristic vehicles, and you’ll also find them revolutionizing consumer products. They may work in smaller innovative high-tech companies, designing software, parts, and equipment. You’ll find them in mining as well as the oil and gas industry, since the equipment for these industries now includes electronics, mechanical equipment, and systems development.

Robotics Industry Screaming for These Skills

While employers have been seeking this combination of skills in their engineering employees, the term mechatronics to describe these needs is still relatively new. “I don’t think the robotics industry is asking for mechatronics specifically. The term is still new. But they want that type of engineering background,” said Devaprasad. “They are asking for mechanical engineers with experience in electronics and computer science.”

Mechatronics as an engineering discipline came out of the need for a new engineering discipline to meet the changes in industry and manufacturing. “Jobs have been changing since the dawn of the industrial revolution. If you ask 100% of our member companies, they’re having a problem finding the skilled people in robotics and mechatronics,” said Bob Doyle, director of communications at the Association for Advancing Automation, which includes the Robotics Industry Association (RIA). “Our companies are clamoring to hire students who have these skills.”

What’s in a Name?

Devaprasad noted that Lake Superior State University has been careful in choosing the right name for a degree that includes but is not limited to robotics. “Lake Superior State University was the first university to create a bachelor's in robotics 31 years ago,” he said. “Robotics gained traction in the 1980s. That was good, but we found there was risk in narrowing down the degree by calling it robotics engineering when actually our graduates were systems engineers.”

Even with the growth of the robotics industry, calling an engineering degree “robotics engineering” can be a problem for graduates. “If the robotics industry were slowing down, they wouldn’t hire these graduates. People would say we’re not moving strong on robots,” said Devaprasad.

Robotics work implies mechatronics, since it involves mechanical, electronics, and systems design work. “The moment we say industrial robotics, people are able to relate to it right away,” he said. “A lot of companies are looking for people with background in the skills that make up mechatronics. The robotics industry is seeing record numbers of robot systems being used. That opens up demand for mechatronics engineers.”

The limitations of a “robotics engineering” degree led Lake Superior State University to switch to the term, “mechatronics engineering.” “We wanted to offer a degree that included robotics, but we wanted to do it a different way by calling it mechatronics,” said Devaprasad. “That reduces the risk for the graduates. We include the bread-and-butter engineering fields of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, and we do it with a robotics concentration. Yet mechatronics is a broader and more useful term for graduates.”

Advanced manufacturing requires the range of skills encompassed by mechatronics, even if only a portion of that manufacturing involves robots. “How does robotics fit in? There are times when mechatronics is used interchangeably with robotics because robotics is a multiple disciplinary function,” Devaprasad said. “Universities are offering degrees in robotics engineering, but the engineers coming out of those programs are going to be called mechatronics engineers.”

Rob Spiegel has covered automation and control for 15 years, 12 of them for Design News. Other topics he has covered include supply chain technology, alternative energy, and cyber security. For 10 years he was owner and publisher of the food magazine Chile Pepper.

origami-inspired robot combines micrometer precision with high speed

Because of their high precision and speed, Delta robots are deployed in many industrial processes, including pick-and-place assemblies, machining, welding and food packaging. Starting with the first version developed by Reymond Clavel for a chocolate factory to quickly place chocolate pralines in their packages, Delta robots use three individually controlled and lightweight arms that guide a platform to move fast and accurately in three directions. The platform is either used as a stage, similar to the ones being used in flight simulators, or coupled to a manipulating device that can, for example, grasp, move, and release objects in prescribed patterns. Over time, robotics have designed smaller and smaller Delta robots for tasks in limited work spaces, yet shrinking them further to the millimeter scale with conventional manufacturing techniques and components has proven fruitless.

Reported in Science Robotics, a new design, the milliDelta robot, developed by Robert Wood's team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) overcomes this miniaturization challenge. By integrating their micro fabrication technique with high-performance composite materials that can incorporate flexural joints and bending actuators, the milli Delta can operate with high speed, force, and micrometer precision, which make it compatible with a range of micro manipulation tasks in manufacturing and medicine.

In 2011, inspired by pop-up books and origami, Wood's team developed a micro-fabrication approach that enables the assembly of robots from flat sheets of composite materials. Pop-up MEMS (short for "microelectromechanical systems") manufacturing has since been used for the construction of dynamic centimeter-scale machines that can simply walk away, or, as in the case of the RoboBee, can fly. In their new study, the researchers applied their approach to develop a Delta robot measuring a mere 15 mm-by-15 mm-by-20 mm.

"The physics of scaling told us that bringing down the size of Delta robots would increase their speed and acceleration, and pop-up MEMS manufacturing with its ability to use any material or combination of materials seemed an ideal way to attack this problem," said Wood, who is a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and co-leader of its Bioinspired Robotics platform. Wood is also the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS. "This approach also allowed us to rapidly go through a number of iterations that led us to the final milliDelta."

The milliDelta design incorporates a composite laminate structure with embedded flexural joints that approximate the more complicated joints found in large scale Delta robots. "With the help of an assembly jig, this laminate can be precisely folded into a millimeter-scale Delta robot. The milliDelta also utilizes piezoelectric actuators, which allow it to perform movements at frequencies 15 to 20 times higher than those of other currently available Delta robots," said first-author Hayley McClintock, a Wyss Institute Staff Researcher on Wood's team.

In addition, the team demonstrated that the milliDelta can operate in a workspace of about seven cubic millimeters and that it can apply forces and exhibit trajectories that, together with its high frequencies, could make it ideal for micromanipulations in industrial pick-and-place processes and microscopic surgeries such as retinal microsurgeries performed on the human eye.

Putting the milliDelta's potential for microsurgeries and other micromanipulations to a first test, the researchers explored their robot as a hand tremor-cancelling device. "We first mapped the paths that the tip of a toothpick circumscribed when held by an individual, computed those, and fed them into the milliDelta robot, which was able to match and cancel them out," said co-first author Fatma Zeynep Temel, Ph.D., a SEAS Postdoctoral Fellow in Wood's team. The researchers think that specialized milliDelta robots could either be added on to existing robotic devices, or be developed as standalone devices like, for example, platforms for the manipulation of cells in research and clinical laboratories.

"The work by Wood's team demonstrating the enhanced speed and control of their milliDelta robot at the millimeter scale opens entirely new avenues of development for industrial and medical robots, which are currently beyond the reach of existing technologies. It's yet another example of how our Bio inspired Robotics platform is leading the way into the future," said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, as well as Professor of Bio engineering at SEAS.