Teaching mechatronics with tuned problem-based projects

ABSTRACT System design—a complex multi-dimensional synthesis task—is a key skill for practising mechatronics engineers. Challenging team projects stimulate engineering students into developing this skill and others, including teamwork, communication and project planning. This paper describes a teaching design that combines project-based learning with problem-based learning. The design of the challenge is specifically tuned to give rise to conflicting engineering constraints and common problems encountered in mechatronics. This paper describes how to use the design process to develop a project-problem framework, and provides a case study in which limited energy economy, sensing and control, and disturbances and uncertainty challenges are emphasised.