Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering

Dr. Nima Lotfi receives an award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.

Integration of an Experiential Learning Paradigm into Mechatronics, Robotics, and Control Engineering Curricula in the School of Engineering

Engineers have played a major role in shaping the world since the industrial revolution and especially, in the past few decades, the field of engineering has experienced a tremendous and dynamic growth, mainly due to the advances in integrated circuits and electronics, embedded systems and computers, networks, and intelligent systems. In its commitment to shape a changing world, the School of Engineering at SIUE has undertaken numerous initiatives to be able to provide the best cutting-edge learning experience for the students to prepare them for this fast-paced job market. One such effort is the establishment of a new Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering degree program which has seen a remarkable growth in student enrollments since its commencement in Fall 2016. Prospective graduates of the School of Engineering, especially the MRE degree program, require an interdisciplinary knowledge of mechanical, electrical, computer, software, and systems engineering to be able to design smart and autonomous systems and processes to improve human life and welfare. The current curricula in the SoE departments, however, do not encompass sufficient experiential learning opportunities to expose students to the multidisciplinary nature of systems, especially in the field of Mechatronics, Robotics, and Controls. In this project, we propose to build a number of experimental laboratory platforms which can be used in Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering and Computer Science departments. These platforms which include: a robotic arm, a hardware-in-the-loop electric vehicle emulator, pressure/fluid level process control experiment, and temperature regulation process control experiment would provide a comprehensive learning experience for the students and familiarize them with various important and integrated disciplines, present in real-world systems. Upon the completion of the development of these platforms, projected to be towards the end of summer, they can readily be used in various courses, including ECE381, ECE365, ME356, ME356L, ME450, ME454/MRE454/ECE467, MRE358, and MRE320, across the School of Engineering. Extrapolating from the enrollment numbers in these courses in the past two semesters, the introduction of these experimental platforms would improve the learning experience of more than 400 students