Modelling and Simulation in Mechatronics

Mechatronic systems are used by everybody on a daily basis. Acceleration sensors and gyroscopes in modern smartphones or autonomous vehicles are just two examples for mechatronic systems. A robot is a typical mechatronic system which contains mechanical, electrical, system control and computer engineering in one system. Many concepts, e. g. autonomous driving, are based on concepts which stem from robotics.

The course starts with an anlysis of kinematics and kinetics of robot systems. After that various calculation methods for inverse kinematics are presented as well as the second order lagrangian equations used for systematic derivation of the equations of motion. An overview of system identification, verification and validation of the mechanical and electrical properties needed for simulation is given. Followed by an introduction to actuators, trajectory planning methods and concepts of system control for robots. Then we will have a look at sensors and signal processing. Controlling a robot via image processing is especially important for service robots or a swarm of interacting robots. We will get to now the so called 'Vision Based Robot Control' method and talk about the communication of interacting systems. In the last part of the course an overview of optical-mechanical systes is given, another interesting field of mechatronics. An Introduction to OM-Sim, a Matlab-Toolbox developed at the ITM for simulation of optical systems is given. The toolbox uses ray tracing to calculate the influence of rigid body motion, deformation and stress on the optical imaging.