By CARRIE WILLIAMS
A class in mechatronics, offered through the Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Technology Department, will debut Fall Semester for interested students.
Robots that vacuum, self-adjusting cruise control and rice cookers that sense when rice is done are products made possible through mechatronics.
Three undergraduate students have been researching other universities that have mechatronics as part of their curriculum.
There are only 15 noteworthy mechatronic programs in the United States, said Eric Blair, a senior from Danville, Calif., majoring in mechanical engineering.
Japan coined the term 'mechatronics.' Degrees in mechatronics are available at some universities in Europe, Blair said. The United States is on the tail end of the wave.
Mechatronics focuses on integrating the mechanical engineering with the electrical, said Chad Humberstone, a senior from San Diego, Calif, from mechanical engineering. The old school of thought was that after the mechanical engineers had assembled a product, they handed it over to the electrical engineers to program it, Blair said.
As microchips get cheaper, they can be used in more applications, said Dave Pettingill, a senior from Camarillo, Calif., majoring in mechanical engineering. The public is going to see more smart products. That is, products that are programmed and have sensors to respond to stimuli in certain ways.
For example, the ability of a car to have self-adjustable cruise control involves a sensor that would sense the speed of a car in front of it, then would adjust its distance depending on how it was programmed, Blair said.
Anti-lock brakes are another example of how mechatronics can work. After pressure is applied to the brake pedal, a sensor can determine what the weather conditions are like and can send the data to a programmed computer device. Depending on weather conditions, the anti-lock brakes will function accordingly, Blair said.
Rice cookers that sense when rice is done work in a similar manner. There is a sensor to know when the rice is cooked, a computer chip with the programmed directions and the means to shut off, Blair said.
In an attempt to avoid blurry pictures while moving, stability cameras can continually adjust themselves to compensate for the movement caused by outside forces, Blair said. There is a sensor to feel the movement, a microprocessor with the programmed directions and an actuator to tilt the lens in the direction it needs to be compensated for.
Eventually, mechatronics will have the potential to expand into creating robot vacuum cleaners. The vacuum would contain a set of eyes or sensors, a microprocessor with programmed directions of what to do to avoid hitting furniture and other objects and the mechanical means to do so, Humberstone said.
Blair said mechatronics is broad. It can be used in the manufacturing of a product as well as in the product itself.
The more monotonous jobs can be taken care of by automated machines. Doing so would improve productivity. Factories would then concentrate on employing higher skilled employees to focus on more complex tasks, said Kevin Smith, a professor in the department.