Mechatronics

Mechatronics (or Mechanical and Electronics Engineering) is the synergistic combination of mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, controls engineering and computer engineering to create useful products. The purpose of this interdisciplinary engineering field is the study of automata from an engineering perspective and serves the purposes of controlling advanced hybrid systems. The word itself is a combination of 'Mechanics' and 'Electronics'

Automation (ancient Greek: = self dictated), roboticization or industrial automation or numerical control is the use of control systems such as computers to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization.

Robotics is the science and technology of robots, and their design, manufacture, and application. Robotics has connections to electronics, mechanics, and software.

A servomechanism, or servo is an automatic device that uses error-sensing feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism. The term correctly applies only to systems where the feedback or error-correction signals help control mechanical position or other parameters. For example, an automotive power window control is not a servomechanism, as there is no automatic feedback which controls positionthe operator does this by observation. By contrast the car's cruise control uses closed loop feedback, which classifies it as a servomechanism.

Industrial servomotor The grey/green cylinder is the brush-type DC motor. The black section at the bottom contains the planetary reduction gear, and the black object atop the motor is the optical rotary encoder for position feedback. This is the steering actuator of a large robot vehicle.

A control system is a device or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems. There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls. There is also fuzzy logic, which attempts to combine some of the design simplicity of logic with the utility of linear control. Some devices or systems are inherently not controllable.

Fuzzy logic is a form of multi-valued logic derived from fuzzy set theory to deal with reasoning that is approximate rather than precise. In binary sets with binary logic, in contrast to fuzzy logic named also crisp logic, the variables may have a membership value of only 0 or 1. Just as in fuzzy set theory with fuzzy logic the set membership values can range (inclusively) between 0 and 1, in fuzzy logic the degree of truth of a statement can range between 0 and 1 and is not constrained to the two truth values {true (1), false (0)} as in classic predicate logic. And when linguistic variables are used, these degrees may be managed by specific functions,

An example of fuzzy reasoning Fuzzy Set Theory defines Fuzzy Operators on Fuzzy Sets. The problem in applying this is that the appropriate Fuzzy Operator may not be known. For this reason, Fuzzy logic usually uses IF-THEN rules, or constructs that are equivalent, such as fuzzy associative matrices. Rules are usually expressed in the form: IF variable IS property THEN action For example, an extremely simple temperature regulator that uses a fan might look like this: IF temperature IS very cold THEN stop fan IF temperature IS cold THEN turn down fan IF temperature IS normal THEN maintain level IF temperature IS hot THEN speed up fan