Abstract:

The School of Engineering of the University of Bergamo has a Mechatronics curriculum both in the MSc course in Mechanical Engineering and in the MSc course in Computer Science Engineering.

The syllabus of the Mechatronics curriculum is composed of several courses covering a wide range of topics belonging to different disciplines, e.g. Functional design of mechanical and mechatronic systems, Drives for mechanical systems, Fundamentals of control systems, Digital systems for Real-Time control and measurement systems, Modelling and simulation of mechanical systems, etc.

Among the courses of the Mechatronics curriculum, "Mechatronic systems II", a 6 ECTS course delivered to students during the fourth semester with the main educational goal of providing principles and methods for the design of mechatronic systems, is characterized by a large experimental part. Such experimental part consists in the development of laboratory projects on which the topics discussed during the theoretical lectures find their application.

One of the projects concerns a cartesian plotter driven by DC motors; final goal of the project is to draw sketches of any shape, starting from a file in dxf format. In order to accomplish the target, students have to develop the activities which are typical of a mechatronic system's design: modelling and simulation of the whole system (including actuators and drives), choice of the control system, development of the control software and implementation on the real time hardware. Students are also asked to develop a GUI to easily upload the sketches to be drawn.

The paper reports in details each activity requested to students, included the experimental validation, highlighting how this kind of "hands-on" approach allows students to reach competences on the design of mechatronic systems.

Keywords:

Mechatronics, Cartesian plotter, Modelling and simulation, Control.