DEVELOPMENT OF A DESKTOP DESIGN SETUP FOR MECHATRONICS ENGINEERING EDUCATION AT SOPHOMORE LEVEL.

One of the problems regarding the cornerstone mechatronic design course at sophomore is that, students may experience difficulties in using various sensors and actuators in their projects, since they have almost no background on mechatronic components at this level. In this study, a desktop design platform is developed as an educational setup for cornerstone mechatronics design course. The desktop design includes various mechanical/mechatronic/ electronic components with all connections and interfaces in the form of a distributed physical structure independent of dynamical and geometrical parameters. The setup is designed such that students can observe, understand and make experiments on the main working principles and general behavior of the included components. The setup has been tested using several educational robot design cases. The paper explains design and construction of the setup. An example educational design case is also presented to clarify its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]