Course syllabus

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SSY261 Applied mechatronics design lp4 VT24 (7.5 hp)

The course is offered by the Department of Electrical Engineering

Contact details

Examiner

Lecturers

  • Emmanuel Dean 
  • Karinne Ramirez-Amaro 

Teaching Assistant (TA)

Student representatives:

MPPDE Andreas Belle Nylén andreas.nylen@live.se
MPPDE Fredrik Nygren feffe141@outlook.com
MPPDE Oskar Persson oskarpersson1997@gmail.com 
MPPDE Åke Sterning sterning.ake@outlook.com 
MPPDE Sigrid Wirdheim wirdheim@chalmers.se

         

Course purpose

The course aims to give practical experience in the field of mechatronics. The focus will be on the design, synthesis and analysis of mechatronic products containing control of motion, velocity and position. The topics covered in this course were chosen to enhance the knowledge of students towards the new trends in robotics. This will allow students to have a better understanding of more demanding material to solve real-life problems.

 

Schedule

TimeEdit

Course literature

The material for the course will be provided during the lectures and tutorials. 

Additional material will be provided via Canvas in this course.

Course design

The course comprises lectures, exercises, and a number of assignments/laboratory experiments that address important parts of the course. These assignments involve specification, simulation, and synthesis of a mechatronic system and are to be handed in.

Changes made since the last occasion

  • This course has changed its content to better reflect its applied aspect. For this more importance is given to the assignments and final project. 
  • We will introduce tutorials on ROS2 which require some programming experience in C++ and Python. This year, we will not use Matlab for the laboratory assignments. 
  • Some of the content was removed to give more emphasis on the hands-on programing experience of a mechatronic system in a simulation environment. 

Learning objectives and syllabus

After completion of the course, the student should be able to:
•    Analyze, explain and apply sensing and actuation that can be used to improve the characteristics of a technical system.
•    Describe and understand how sensing, control and actuation communicate to control a mechatronic system, e.g. a wheeled robot.
•    Apply the learned concepts using selected control frameworks for analysis and/or synthesis of mechatronic products. The student will learn to use computer tools such as the Robotics Operating System (ROS2) for this purpose.

Content

The course covers the following topics:
* Introduction to the Robot Operating System (ROS2) which contains different software libraries and tools for building/testing mechatronic and robotic applications.
* Learn about different types of sensors in Mechatronic systems. This will consider learning about different measurement devices such as position sensors, and velocity sensors. Furthermore, we will study different filtering methods.
* Practical experience in motion control with simple wheeled robots (in simulation).
* Design and analysis of mechatronic systems. Integration of components for system or subsystem design.

 

Examination form

The final grade of this course will be awarded via continuous assessment in the form of 1) assignments 2) Online Quizzes and 3) a final team project. 

To pass this course, the students are required to pass 

  • assignments
  • all the online quizzes
  • a team's final project

Assignments: To pass the laboratory assignments, you need to pass all four assignments. 
The goal of each assignment is to provide practical experience in implementations of the learned theory and tutorials. Each assignment will have a set of tasks, which in total can accumulate different points as follows:

Assignment Max Points Min Points (to pass the assignment)
A01 8 4
A02 12 6
A03 15 7,5
A04 20 10

Each assignment will be considered as a "pass" when it completes at least half of the assignment points (see above table). The assignments should be strictly delivered on time according to the course schedule. Any assignment submitted after the deadline will be considered as not delivered (it will be marked as failed and you will not be able to re-submit it). In total, you will have four assignments, and then the laboratory will be passed if the student passes all four assignments.

For each assignment, you need to deliver original material in the form of code or a simulation file, depending on the assignment. The code must be accompanied by a short report, e.g. readMe file that describes the delivered solution and how to run it, especially in the case the delivered material requires a custom initialization. All submissions will be expected via canvas.

Online Quizzes. In addition, the active participation of the students in the lectures and tutorial sessions will be evaluated via online (Canvas) and laboratory quizzes.

Final project:  An important part of the course is a final project that combines all the main topics covered in the lectures as well as the assignments and tutorials of this course. The final project will be performed in teams of 2-4 people. 

Note: even when you do the project work in teams, you will be examined individually. Every project member should be involved in all parts of the project and the final presentation. Failing to actively contribute to all parts of the project might result in a failed grade. 

For the final project, each member of the team can earn between 0-35 points. Each team will present their obtained results to the lectures, where each member of the team will explain his/her contributions. Additionally, each team will deliver their solution accompanied by a README file that explains how to run their project to see their obtained results.

 

Finally, your final grade is computed with the following formula:

Total grade= Assignment + Quizzes + Final project

See the below table to convert the number of points to the final course grade.

Number of points Final grade
87 - 100 5
73 - 86.99 4
60 - 72.99 3
0 - 59.99 fail

Course summary:

Date Details Due