Larry Boulden
May 10th, 2008.
My first brush with Mechatronics came courtesy of White Sands Missile Range.
“Imagine a missile launch,” my boss explained. “It comes out of the silo without warning, goes like a streak, and sometimes explodes on launch. We want an unmanned tracking mount that will sit close to the launch area, pick up the missile, and track it — no matter what.”
The engineering assignment was pure Mechatronics. Make the mechanical pieces strong but light enough for the accelerations and slew rates to come. Give the drives enough power, speed, and responsiveness. Make sure the sensors could pick up the bird, lock on it and follow it to the death. Fashion controls that would tie it all together and make it all work.It was, in short, classic Mechatronics, though we never used that word. It would be two years later, in 1969, before Tetsuro Mori, a senior engineer at Yaskawa, coined it. But how the practice of Mechatronics, and the engineering disciplines it uses, have grown in the years since then.
According to Wikipedia, Mechatronics is the synergistic combination of mechanical, electronic, and software engineering. The purpose of this interdisciplinary engineering field is the study of automated machines from an engineering perspective.
The “automated machines” so created range from planetary rovers to production machines, from automotive subsystems like antilock braking to synergy drives. And yes, the roster of Mechatronics successes includes a bevy of common consumer products such as autofocus cameras, CD-players, washing machines, and hard drives for computers.
Here at Design World, we regard Mechatronics as one of the most challenging and exciting subjects we cover. We hope you’ll visit our Project Mechatronics Website,
www.projectmechatronics.com, and check out our blog, our Wiki, and the rest of the coverage we offer. While you’re there, we suggest you log on and add your comments to the Wiki. We welcome your contributions to Project Mechatronics.
Larry B
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Larry Boulden ::
Staff Editor
Larry has worked as a design engineer, engineering manager, and engineering communicator. He holds M.E. degrees from
New Mexico State University and has practiced engineering with firms like Lockheed, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Army. In his 38 years as a communicator, Larry has been a writer, editor, and publisher of engineering magazines, and is a four-time winner of Neal Awards for Outstanding Journalism. He has also ghostwritten eight books on engineering subjects.
