Mechatronics combine mechanical parts, actuators, hybrid electronic/computer-based controls, and software
BY PETER THORNE
Managing Director
Cambashi
www.cambashi.com
The word “mechatronics” successfully highlights the importance of robotics systems that combine mechanical parts, actuators, and hybrid electronic/computer-based controls. But now, across discrete industries, more and more products include a heart of software. Designers and engineers working on products from consumer goods to industrial machines find themselves doing mechatronics, and must find better ways to use design tools, and better ways to handle multi-disciplinary projects.
Today, the scope of the mechatronics problem and opportunity is growing explosively because of the low cost and easy availability of network connectivity. Every device has potential to be connected to the network, so designers have to consider the relative merits of all possible divisions of function between the “local” device and “remote” capabilities accessed via the network.
There are examples in every sector — more products that phone home for software updates, medical imaging devices that use a connected service for archiving, jet engines that transmit sensor readings to service desks the other side of the world for in-flight monitoring and analysis, consumer electronics devices that depend on remote sources of music and images, agricultural machines that regulate fertilizer concentrations according to GPS location and historical records of yield, and many more. Design choices about which side of the network interface will do what are critical. These choices can be a major factor determining competitive success.
Embedded software is the technology that will power innovation in the next generation of products. Touchscreens, cameras, microphones, GPS, motion sensors and so on are all increasingly available as “commodity” components. These offer “standard” performance that comes alive when designers find new ways of assembling them with embedded software to coordinate their functions.
Machines of all types will be built from low-cost standard mechatronics subsystems assembled around a platform architecture or framework, and integrated by the embedded software loaded into the platform (see Fig. 1 ). Individual product lines will depend on the scope of the platform; differentiation will depend on the capability of the embedded software. Indeed, the automotive sector has for many years been moving towards this structure.
Fig. 1: Components of a mechatronics system
In the industries that are creating “smart” products, engineering management teams have a sharp interest in the way their companies will handle embedded software technology. Software development can be a bit of a culture shock. The widespread visibility of “apps” in the consumer world has helped de-mystify the intangible nature of executable files. But the relationship of these to complex build structures of source code, the subtle effects of interaction of multiple software objects around a network, the threat of malware, and the willingness of software engineers to handle changes at rates ten or a hundred times the rates you might expect for mechanical components are all factors that take a bit of getting used to.
Engineering managers need a method or process that provides visibility, and a framework within which multi-disciplinary team members can be creative and efficient. Anderl, Nattermann and Rollmann (see 1) have made a timely contribution with a concept based on the V-model. The V-model is widely seen as a central pillar of systems engineering (see 2). By specifying a mid-project phase (which turns the V-model into a W-model), Anderl et al specifically address the issue of dependencies between the multiple technologies involved in a project. One consequence is that data management systems must be able to analyze and synchronize discipline-specific data across disciplines.
Vendors of software tools for product development recognize this challenge. Engineering managers can choose any starting point — mechanical CAD, engineering analysis, software development, electronic design and even the PLM parts of ERP solutions, and vendors will offer some sort of capability or roadmap to integrate software in a multi-domain development, modelling and data management environment.
For example, consider tools that support systems engineering and embedded software development. There’s plenty to choose from in this $2.6 billion market (see 3), and some “turbulence” as both technology and provider boundaries change. PLM vendor PTC acquired embedded software tools provider MKS.
Other global PLM vendors such as Dassault Systèmes and Siemens offer systems engineering tools, which integrate with their design systems, and cover multiple technologies. Precise mechanisms to enable PLM applications to synchronize multiple technology streams of product information vary, but typically involve configuration and customization.
Dassault bought Geensoft and extended its requirements management and automotive software capabilities. EDA companies such as Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys offer tools such as system-level design, virtual prototyping and requirements management in which embedded software is a usual component of, say, system-on-a-chip designs.
IBM Rational offers requirements management, systems engineering and software development tools. These IBM tools handle software systems with components not only embedded in a device, but also running on the computers at headquarters. They also offer a management environment that can monitor progress and performance indicators by direct tracking of activities across an extended team.
Business systems providers such as SAP and Oracle have design and manufacturing applications that are relevant to embedded software development because they cover parts libraries, bill of materials, version and status handling, data access management and workflows. Oracle also offers technical development tools for embedded systems including Java tools specific to TV, smartcard and general embedded use.
National Instruments offers the LabVIEW system, a way of creating embedded software (especially for test systems) directly from diagrams. IBM’s “Rhapsody” also builds code from diagrams, integrating with requirements and test handling.
This is a long yet still very partial list. Microcontroller manufacturers usually offer plugins to an open-source, free-of-charge, development environment (almost always Eclipse). The plugins enable the development environment to generate code and interface to the hardware provided by the microcontroller manufacturer. Many tools address multi-domain simulation by interfacing to Mathworks Simulink multi-domain simulation software.
Of course, many traditional engineering concepts apply to embedded software in mechatronics devices. An interesting example is make-or-buy. There is a large and growing market for software components for use in embedded systems. Components range from the underlying real-time operating systems and device interfaces to libraries that handle signal processing, or physics, or user interfaces.
For any hardware component that is seen as a mechatronics ”commodity,” designers and engineers prefer to specify components that come complete with a software stack. This means they can avoid the effort of writing software to interface to the component, and focus their software development efforts on making the component execute functions that represent added-value for their customers.
Mechatronics had its origins in a specific technology area. But today’s reality is software everywhere, and products in every sector that depend on the successful integration of mechanisms, sensors, actuators, interfaces and software. Teams that are comfortable moving functions between technologies as they develop a design proposal will search a less constrained solution space. This will give them a better chance of coming up with an optimum way of meeting requirements — or, at least, something better than the competition. ■
References
2. http://sdm.mit.edu/news/news_articles/sdm_keio/v_model.jpg
3. http://www.cambashi.com/embedded-software-development-tools
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