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Experiences from a new course in mechatronics at Technical University of Denmark are conveyed in this paper. The course is supposed to teach students enrolled in the bachelor degree in electrical engineering some fundamental knowledge about mechanics and to teach students enrolled in the bachelor degree in mechanical engineering fundamentals about electronics. Furthermore the course uses project work as a method to keep the students actively participating and in part have them teach each other the subjects. The general course plan is presented and the reasoning behind the course structure is discussed in the paper, together with a brief look at the student's reactions in form of data from the course evaluation.

As research and development of renewable and clean energy based systems is advancing rapidly, the nonlinear source emulator (NSE) is becoming very essential for testing of maximum power point trackers or downstream converters. Renewable and clean energy sources play important roles in both terrestrial and nonterrestrial applications. However, most existing NSEs have only been concerned with simulating energy sources in terrestrial applications, which may not be fast enough for testing of nonterrestrial applications. In this paper, a high-bandwidth NSE is developed that is able to simulate the behaviors of a typical nonlinear source under different critical conditions that can happen during their operations. The proposed 200-W NSE, which consists of a fourth-order output filter buck converter and a novel nonlinear small-signal reference generator, can quickly react not only to an instantaneous change in the input source but also to a load step between nominal and open circuit. Moreover, all of these operation modes have a very fast settling time of only 10 $\mu$ s, which is hundreds of times faster than that of existing works. This attribute allows for higher speed and a more efficient maximum power point tracking algorithm. The proposed NSE, therefore, offers a superior dynamic performance among devices of the same kind.

Biomass steam pretreatment is a key process in converting agricultural wastes to bioethanol. The pretreatment occurs in a large pressurized tank called a thermal reactor. Two key parameters influence the successfulness of the process: the reactor temperature, and the retention time. A particle pump pressurizes untreated biomass from atmospheric to reactor pressure with recycled steam from the reactor. This paper formulates a steam mathematical model both for the thermal reactor and the particle pump, which is then used to design an L1 adaptive output feedback controller for the reactor temperature. As steam is recycled from the reactor to pressurize the particle pump, pressure drops and the reactor temperature is disturbed. The main control challenge is to reject these disturbances and keep a steady temperature. The nonlinear process model embeds mass and energy balances, valve characteristics, and enthalpy-pressure and pressure-temperature dependencies. Nonlinear feed-forward terms are added in the control strategy. The process model, the control strategy, the application of the L1 adaptive controller and its tuning method based on minimizing a cost function represent novelties of this paper.

In this paper an experimental X-band radar system, called DTU-VISDAM, developed for the detection and monitoring of human vital signs is described. The DTU-VISDAM radar exploits a low intermediate frequency (IF) heterodyne RF front-end architecture and single-sideband (SSB) transmission for easier and more reliable extraction of the vital signs. The hardware implementation of the proposed low-IF RF front-end architecture and associated IF circuitry is discussed. Furthermore, the signal processing and calibration steps necessary to extract the vital signs information measured on a human subject are described.

Summary form only given. This paper aims at an integrative and innovative approach to curriculum methods of teaching engineering methodology courses. The course is problem driven where industrial case studies are the basis for the introduction of problems, key concepts, and solution methodologies. The objective of developing this educational environment is to bring the complexity of real world decision making to the classroom and to simulate the dynamics and uncertainties of organisational decision making in a classroom setting.