Getting a Head Start on Mechatronics

Increasingly, engineering educators see the value of teachingcollege students the multidisciplinary skills of mechatronics design.Many, however, are intimidated by the time and expense of creating newcourses and laboratory experiments that help students grasp theessentials of this synergistic engineering approach.

Quanser, a Torontofirm specializing in systems for control design, is targeting thataudience with modular hardware and software packages that helpprofessors take the mystery out of mechatronics and control theory.

"Students don't say much when they see our equipment for the first time," says Quanser Chief Technology Officer Jacob Apkarian."They start talking when they feel it," adds the former professor whofounded the company in 1990 after discovering many schools lacked thetools to translate control into tangible concepts students could grasp.

Accent on Controls

Quanser's products focus especially on the control engineeringaspect of mechatronics design. The company's turnkey control labs, forexample, typically include software, control boards and poweramplifiers, which provide the basis for more than 50 Quanser-designedexperiments. These exercises range from basic servo units to highlycomplex systems that can be created by adding more modules. Softwarechoices include National Instrument's LabVIEW, The MathWorks' Simulink and the company's own WinCon simulation package.

The key goal in these experiments is rapid design. Students canquickly understand the system, connect it together, drag and dropblocks in the software and tune the controller's parameters. Meanwhile,professors and lab instructors work with pre-written curriculum fromQuanser and receive solution manuals, technical support and samplecontrollers created in either LabVIEW or Simulink software packages.Support for Maple sheets from Maplesoft for solving more complex dynamics & kinematics problems are also available.

The Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) is one of a growing number of schools worldwide that have contracted for Quanser's turnkey control labs. "We use MATLABand Simulink extensively. As a result, incorporating the Quansersolution was a perfect fit to enhance our lab. And the experience insetting up the turnkey system has been extremely simple andstraightforward," says Electrical Engineering Professor Hadi Sadat.

At Turkey's University of Selcuk,Assistant Professor Mete Kalyoncu has much the same reaction:"Everything is ready to research and teach. We don't struggle tocombine the components for experimental devices we need."

Professor Dennis Bernstein of the University of Michigan's Aero-space Engineering Dept.also notes, "Quanser excels at developing research and educationalsystems that illuminate control concepts, advance learning and - mostimportantly - facilitate greater understanding and insight into controlissues."

An Aid to Researchers

Besides educators, researchers rely on Quanser control solutions forimplementing and evaluating feedback strategies, such as PID, LQG, Hinfinity, fuzzy, neural nets, adaptive and nonlinear controllers. Manyof the company's newer products are designed for researchers in suchburgeoning fields such as robotically assisted surgery. In lateSeptember, Quanser announced its participation in a new researchpartnership devoted to robotic surgery. Featuring Quanser's hapticcontrol technology, the new research venture brings together Canadian Surgical Technology, Advanced Robotics (C-STAR) and the Ontario Centres of Excellence.

In the past, a major drawback in robot-assisted surgery was that thesurgeon lost the all-important sense of touch. Quanser's haptictechnology resolves this problem by using complex mathematical computermodels to convey realistic sensory feelings back to the surgeon. "Theneed for medical robotic technologyis growing exponentially and haptic-enhanced robotic surgical systemswill become staples of the hospitals and operating rooms of thefuture," says Dr. Rajni Patel, director of Engineering at C-STAR.

Quanser CTO Apkarian says the company's haptic interface productsare an example of higher-end mechatronics design. "By setting clearperformance goals and systematically examining every component in theconcept stage, we created a fantastically lightweight robot," he says."The design eliminates undesirable factors such as friction, backlashand jitter, allowing for an incredible level of high-fidelitysensation."

This haptic interface equipment is already in several laboratories and research centers around the world, including McMaster University in Hamilton."Quanser's haptic interface technology and its WinCon real-time controlsolution have been instrumental in our research progress by providing aremarkably efficient platform for experimental evaluation of researchresults," says McMaster researcher Shahin Sirouspour."It is equally impressive to see that the same technology is being usedin our undergraduate laboratories for medical robotics and controlseducation."

Others are using Quanser control solutions in customized applications. For example, Quanser is working with Manfredi Maggiore at the University of Torontoon a high-precision device, based on magnetic levitation, which canposition an object placed on a moving platform in three degrees offreedom with high accuracy. "Magnetic levitation is an excellent technology because there is no contact, so there is no wear of components," says Maggiore.

Apkarian sees such applications as adding more fuel to the company'score business, products for teaching and research. The likely result?Even more growth for a company that has already doubled in size in thelast four years.