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Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) is a growing engineering discipline focused on the creation of smart and autonomous systems and processes in an integrated and interdisciplinary fashion towards improving the quality of human lives. Despite the growing need for MRE professionals and increasing numbers of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, this field does not yet enjoy recognition as a distinct and identifiable discipline. A distinct and identifiable engineering discipline must address four questions: 1) What is the body of knowledge that practitioners must master? 2) What skills must practitioners demonstrate? 3) What are the ways of thinking that permeate the discipline? 4) How do practitioners define and distinguish the discipline? Within the MRE community, there is disagreement over how these questions are addressed, and hence, whether and how to define a unified “mechatronics and robotics engineering” discipline or to differentiate “mechatronics engineering” from “robotics engineering”. Four groups of stakeholders were identified: prospective students, current students, educators, and industry professionals. An online survey with common sections on definitions of “mechatronics engineering” and “robotics engineering” and stakeholder-specific questions about differentiators was distributed to stakeholders via email invitation. Quantitative data analysis was used to code and categorize responses. Preliminary data analysis results formore »categories and codes are presented.« less

Intelligent Autonomous Systems, including Intelligent Manufacturing & Automation and Industry 4.0, have immense potential to improve human health, safety, and welfare. Engineering these systems requires an interdisciplinary knowledge of mechanical, electrical, computer, software, and systems engineering throughout the design and development process. Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) is emerging as a discipline that can provide the broad inter-disciplinary technical and professional skill sets that are critical to fulfill the research and development needs for these advanced systems. Despite experiencing tremendous, dynamic growth, MRE lacks a settled-on and agreed-upon body-of-knowledge, leading to unmet needs for standardized curricula, courses, laboratory platforms, and accreditation criteria, resulting in missed career opportunities for individuals and missed economic opportunities for industry. There have been many educational efforts around MRE, including courses, minors, and degree programs, but they have not been well integrated or widely adopted, especially in USA. To enable MRE to coalesce as a distinct and identifiable engineering field, the authors conducted four workshops on the Future of Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (FoMRE) education at the bachelor’s degree level. The overall goal of the workshops was to improve the quality of undergraduate MRE education and to ease the adoption of teaching materials to prepare graduatesmore »with a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical hands-on skills. To realize this goal, the specific objectives were to generate enthusiasm and a sense of community among current and future MRE educators, promote diversity and inclusivity within the MRE community, identify thought leaders, and seek feedback from the community to serve as a foundation for future activities. The workshops were intended to benefit a wide range of participants including educators currently teaching or developing programs in MRE, PhD students seeking academic careers in MRE, and industry professionals desiring to shape the future workforce. Workshop activities included short presentations on sample MRE programs, breakout sessions on specific topics, and open discussion sessions. As a result of these workshops, the MRE educational community has been enlarged and engaged, with members actively contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This paper presents the workshops’ formats, outcomes, results of participant surveys, and their analyses. A major outcome was identifying concept, skill, and experience inventories organized around the dimensions of foundational/practical/applications and student preparation/MRE knowledgebase. Particular attention is given to the extent to which the workshops realized the project goals, including attendee demographics, changes in participant attitudes, and development of the MRE community. The paper concludes with a summary of lessons learned and a call for future activities to shape the field.« less

The evolution of Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) has enabled numerous technological advancements since the early 20th century. Professionals in this field are reshaping the world by designing smart and autonomous systems aiming to improve human well-being. Recognizing the need for preparing highly-educated MRE professionals, many universities and colleges are adopting MRE as a distinct degree program. One of the cornerstones of MRE education is laboratory- and project-based learning to provide a hands-on and engaging experience for the students. To this end, numerous software and hardware platforms have been developed and utilized in MRE courses and laboratories. Commercial products can provide a rich hands-on experience for the students, but they can be cost-prohibitive. On the other hand, open-source platforms are low-cost alternatives to their commercial counterparts and are being increasingly used in industry. Developing open-source laboratory platforms will be a more feasible option for a wider range of institutions and would enable familiarizing the students with recent technological trends in industry and exposing them to the development details of a real-world system. However, adoption of open-source platforms in MRE courses can be lengthy and time consuming. Educators who wish to utilize such systems typically lack the expertise in all aspectsmore »of their implementation which can make them difficult to troubleshoot. Debugging open-source systems can also be challenging because most of the troubleshooting is done through forum discussions which appear to be very noisy and unfocused. The flip side of this chaotic nature of the open-source world is that there is a vast amount of information available, including tutorials, examples, and commentary and, with some focused searching, debugging and usage questions can often get answered. There is also a disconnect between the forum participants, typically computer scientists and hobbyists, and MRE educators and students. Finally, the available resources and documentation for utilizing open-source platforms in MRE education are insufficient and incomprehensive. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to increase awareness and familiarity with the use of open-source software and hardware packages in MRE education and practice towards accelerating their adoption. To this end, open-source software packages such as Python, GNU Octave, OpenFOAM, Java, Modelica, Gazebo, SPICE, Scilab, and Gnuplot, which have the potential to be useful in the modeling and analysis of MRE systems are introduced. Furthermore, low-cost and powerful open-source hardware packages such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone which can be used as the main processing unit for data acquisition and control implementation in a wide range of MRE systems are reviewed and their limitations and potentials are investigated. This paper provides a valuable resource for MRE students and faculty who would like to utilize open-source hardware and software platforms in their education and research.« less

Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) is one of the engineering disciplines that is experiencing tremendous, dynamic growth. MRE professionals are shaping the world by designing smart systems and processes that will improve human welfare. One’s ability to meaningfully contribute to this field requires her/him to acquire an interdisciplinary knowledge of mechanical, electrical, computer, software, and systems engineering to oversee the entire design and development process of emerging MRE systems. There have been many educational efforts around MRE, including courses, minors, and degree programs, but they have not been well integrated or widely adopted. Now is the time for MRE to coalesce as a distinct and identifiable engineering discipline. To this end, and with support from the National Science Foundation, the authors have planned three workshops, the first of which has concluded, on the future of MRE education at the bachelor’s degree and postgraduate levels. The objectives of these workshops are to generate enthusiasm and inculcate a sense of community among current and future MRE educators; promote diversity and inclusivity within the community; seek feedback from the community to serve as a foundation for future activities; and identify thought leaders for future community activities. The workshops will benefit a wide rangemore »of participants including educators currently teaching in MRE; PhD students seeking academic careers in MRE; and industry professionals desiring to shape the future MRE workforce. These workshops will significantly contribute to the quality of MRE education and increase adoption to prepare individuals with a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical hands-on learning. Workshop activities include short presentations on sample MRE programs; breakout sessions on topics such as mechatronic and robotics knowledgebase, project-based learning, advanced and open-source platforms, reducing barriers to adoption, accreditation, preparation to teach MRE, and community-building; and open discussion and feedback. In this paper, the outcomes of the first workshop, results of the qualitative and quantitative surveys collected from the participants, and their analyses are presented. Particular attention is paid to attendee demographics, changes in participant attitudes, and development of the MRE community.« less