Abstract:

The present paper describes the approach used at the University of Bergamo to teach Mechatronics.

The first course, named "Mechatronic systems", started in academic year 2002-2003 and it was mainly delivered to BSc students of Mechanical engineering and Computer Science Engineering. Thereafter, mechatronics became increasingly attractive for students, also thanks to the increasing demand of industrial firms for engineers with high skills in design and development of mechatronic systems. As a matter of fact, starting from the first (and unique) course mentioned before, Mechatronics has developed becoming a curriculum both of the MSc course in Mechanical Engineering and of the MSc course in Computer Science Engineering.

Among the courses included in the syllabus of the Mechatronics curriculum, the core one is "Mechatronic systems II", a 6 ECTS course delivered to students during the fourth semester. The main educational goal of the course is to provide principles and methods for the design of mechatronic systems. The design procedure is based on the development of the model of the whole mechatronic system, including the model of the drive system, of the actuators, of the mechanical system and of the control system.

In particular, the course deals with electric and piezoelectric actuators, modern control techinques for mechanical system (as pole placement, gain scheduling, optimal control, modal control), force and position control, haptic interfaces.

Another important part of the course deals with vision systems both for object tracking and for visual servoing. At this aim, lectures focus on image elaboration algorithms, definition of the control strategies, development of the simulation model of a complete system.

Besides the theoretical lectures, the course has also a large laboratory part dedicated to experimental activities on which the theoretical part finds its application. Students has to develop specific projects as single/double inverted pendulum control, single/double inverted pendulum tracking by means of a commercial camera, 1 dof linear haptic interface, visual servoing for the position control of a 1 dof mechanical system.

The present paper describes in details the different projects assigned to the students, the steps to be followed for their development (modeling, simulation, control definition, test), the experimental validation, and the results obtained by the students in term of increased knowledge on mechatronic systems.

Keywords:

Mechatronics, Modeling, Control, Computer vision.