MCH5004 Mechatronic System Design

January 2012

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE Software Design & Programming Laboratory Exercise Laboratory Experiment ECE_E31
1. INTRODUCTION Mechatronics is an interdisciplinary engineering field thats a combination of Mechanical, Electronics and Control engineering. Applications of Mechatronics include factory automation, robotics, electro-mechanical devices such as hard-drives, unmanned vehicles and such. A typical mechatronic system can broadly be divided into two subsystems; an actuation subsystem and a control subsystem. The actuation subsystem typically consists of components that bring about interaction with the physical world. Examples of such would be as motors, cylinders, linear-slides, voicecoils, sensors, transducers, etc. The control subsystem would typically consist of components that impart intelligence to the mechatronic system. Examples of such would be embedded microprocessors, PLCs and their associated software, various ICs, interface cards etc 2. AIM OF THE EXPERIMENT One of the key application areas of Mechatronics would be manufacturing automation wherein goods get produced or assembled, tested and packaged in an automatic fashion with minimum human intervention. In this project we will use such a system as a basis for the design and development of an interactive mechatroincs database search and query (IMDSQ) system. We allow the user to create a database comprising several systematically organized components of a mechatronic system and subsequently allow him/her to add, delete, and query the database. Section 4 of this document describes the key requirements of this project. 3. PREPARATION MATERIAL In order to create an interactive database several solutions exist. We attempt to design a database in which objects are described as basic data-structures. As an example, one of them is a Structure as defined in C language. Equivalently one may prefer to use Object/Class definitions as in C++/Python language. Familiarity with a programming tool (C / C++ / Python) is expected. The user interface need not be a graphical interface and for demonstration purposes one can use DOS-based commands.

Prepared towards a mini project for MCH5004 Mechatronic System Design, January 2012. Contact: A/P Bharadwaj veeravalli, Dept of ECE, NUS, Singapore.

MCH5004 Mechatronic System Design

January 2012

4.

DESCRIPTION AND SPECIFICATIONS OF THE PROJECT In the development of IMDSQ, as a first step, one needs to declare the types of objects to be considered and also categorize them as several types, preferably in the form of tiers. One example of this could be as follows. A component such as Torx Driver Unit is an assembly unit which comprises several components such as, motors, bit-head, bit-bracket and bit-housing, etc, to quote a few. Each of the above could also comprise sub-units within them. The one needs to list all the common attributes of an assembly such as <name, part no, drawing no, location, quantity on hand, projects that are using this component, , >. The database IMDSQ to be created can also be in the form of simple text files. Having created a flexible database as described above, we let the user to interact as follows. ADD FACILITY: User must be able to add-in a component and the system must facilitate including the parts/components at the appropriate category. MODIFY &DELETE FACILITY: User must be able to either modify component specifications or altogether delete it upon a command. SEARCH FACILITY: Search comprises addressing the following cases of interest.

MCH5004 Mechatronic System Design

January 2012

(a) To facilitate searching for a given attribute of a component and/or a system and/or a part within a system from IMDSQ and print the record. Allow the user if he/she wants to carry out again. If the result is a system, then the user may prefer to expand further to look into the components. (b) To facilitate searching for all the parts / components that have been in use on or after a specified date or most popularly used in other projects; Ask the user if he/she wants to carry out again. (c) List the projects that are using a given component / system. (d) Price based search facility Different vendors may price a component differently and hence a user must be given a choice based even on price of the components and the system must be able to generate a comparative summary of the price plans available. (e) A user attempting to design a system must be presented with similar prototypes and must be allowed to see a list of components used in the projects (mining a specific project/system) (f) Besides a price based search, the user can add different items to his cart so that the final list of items and the net price could be displayed. In this way, he can virtually shop for the specific components in his project and get the overall estimate; (g) The user can leave a comment or read other users comments regarding the plus and minus of a specific component;

Finally, a log of activities carried out by a user in his current interactive session to be reported finally before he/she terminates.

MCH5004 Mechatronic System Design

January 2012

5. LABORATORY REPORT AND PROGRAMS Submit a report within one-and-a-half weeks after your laboratory session. Your report must describe clearly on all design aspects explaining on how each of the above features are implemented; Objects needs to be explicitly defined and discussed and argue on why your design choice is preferred; Entire code (all code files) must be properly documented. Submit (1) Your CODE (properly documented); (2) Report with all the abovementioned details together with clear presentation of Test Results (Screen capture) in a systematic way; (3) Submit your exe file too; 6. REFERENCE BOOKS Programming with C or C++ depending on the choice of your implementation. You will be provided with Microsofts Visual Studio IDE in CALES Laboratory. Programming with Python Free online material available along with complete documentation and compiler: www.python.org