Mechatronics : Principles, Technologies & Applications

Mastering the art of mechatronics'' currently looks like one of the most attractive tasks of modern engineering technology and science. Many applications resort to the interdisciplinary approach of mechatronics to enhance the performance, quality and safety of either product or process. Some are very traditional (like hard disk drives, biomedical, automotive and aerospace systems) while others are fairly new (like micro and nano electromechanical systems, unmanned air vehicles, intelligent machining, manufacturing systems or bioinspired devices). This book describe some practical examples, which demonstrate how different competences, disciplines and technologies meet in an innovative mechatronic system. They deal with several domains like the hard disk drive technology, biomedical prostheses, fluidic automation, UAV Vision System, vibration monitoring and suppression in steelmaking plants, materials machining and smart composites. These examples will show the reader, who is still looking for the real meaning of mechatronics, how some innovative technologies allow implementing a sort of artificial intelligence in several systems currently produced. Examples describe neural network positioning control, chaos prevention, myoelectric stimulation of prosthesis, human detection by vision system, multi-physics modeling and control of dynamics. Some topics are related to small scale, as in the case of a finger of a biotronic hand. Nevertheless, the same approach is applied even to huge machines, like the electric arc furnace. It is worth noticing that the authors resorted even to the additive manufacturing, as in prototyping bio-prostheses, or to fiber optics embedded into composite structures. Those technologies allow reducing cost, weight or volume of product. In some cases, the mechatronic approach improves the quality and the accuracy of some material processing, like in rolling or in turning against the risk of selfexcited chatter vibration. The examples described in this book cover a wide range of mechatronic applications