Mechatronics capstone design projects at the University of Washington

Being the synergistic combination of mechanical, electrical, and computer technologies in the design of complex products and processes, mechatronics is inherently multidisciplinary. The teaching of mechatronics is not well suited to the structure of the standard engineering curriculum, which has a highly disciplinary alignment. At the university level, successful mechatronics programs have emerged that can serve as models representing the various ways that mechatronics can be taught. One such program at the undergraduate level is the multi-course guided curriculum in mechatronics that is available to students in their senior year in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Washington. The culmination of this mechatronics thread is an intense, ten-week capstone design course in which students are organized into teams of three or four students each, with each team addressing a different significant, open-ended mechatronics project. Following a brief review of our mechatronics program as a whole, the curriculum into which it fits, and the individual constituent courses, described in this paper are our capstone design course and three typical projects from that course.