Cooperation-focused education in mechatronic engineering design projects
Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Schmidt, Sebastian; Lohmeyer, Quentin; Krebs, Stefan; Hohmann, Sören; Matthiesen, Sven
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany; 2: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Section: Projects
Page(s): 296-301
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1
Abstract
Mechatronic engineers are essential joints within modern product development processes. They closely interact with the classical domains of mechanical, electrical and software engineering in order to support the design of customer oriented products of high integral functionality. Due to this, their day-to-day business in practice is strongly characterized by intensive personal cooperation including a high amount of discussion, negotiation and decision-making regarding present design issues. In education of mechatronic product development primarily the challenge of consistently imparting well-selected knowledge of mechanical, electrical and software engineering is discussed. Resent publications focusing especially the consideration of functional and structural interdependencies between these domains in the context of measurement and control technique. Nevertheless, in addition to train the solving of technical problems, students of mechatronic engineering must develop cooperation competencies to even cope with strategically and organizational issues at an early stage of their studies.
Keywords: Cooperation, mechatronics, project-based learning, team decision making