Mechatronics Engineering

Mechatronics is not a single area; Mechatronics is mixture of technologies and techniques that together help in industrial developments. It was first used (in terms of the computer control of electric motors) by an engineer at Japan's Yaskawa Electric Co. in the late 1960s. Since then, Japan has remained the stronghold for mechatronics, though the term has been widely used in Europe over the past few years. Mechatronics has been slow to gain industrial and academic acceptance as a field of study and practice in Great Britain and the United States. Worldwide, its increasingly prominent place is shown by the growing number of undergraduate and postgraduate Mechatronics Engineering courses that are now being offered. In the 1970s, Mechatronics Engineering was developed from being just a training course at the Japanese industry where was concerned mostly with servo technology used in products such as automatic door openers, vending machines, and auto-focus cameras to the field of teaching and specialisation at the Japanese University. In the 1980s, as information technology was introduced, engineers began to embed microprocessors in mechanical systems to improve their performance. Numerically controlled machines and robots became more compact, while automotive applications such as electronic engine controls and antilock-braking systems became widespread.

By the 1990s, communications technology was added to the mix, yielding products that could be connected in large networks. This development made functions such as the remote operation of robotic manipulator arms possible. At the same time, new, smaller-even micro-scale-sensor and actuator technologies are being used increasingly in new products. As significant as these developments may seem, a good deal of scepticism remains about the idea of codifying them in an engineering field called Mechatronics. "It's certainly a catchy word," but it's an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, development. Mechatronics is really the familiarity with all the other technologies-computers, software, advanced controls, sensors, actuators, and so forth-that make the advanced products possible. Mechatronics Engineering can be defined as synergistic combination of Mechanical, Electronics, Control, and Computer Engineering all are integrated horizontally and vertically through the design processes and manufacturing.