Copyright © 1996 IFAC 8b-02 1

13th Triennial World Congress. San Francisco. USA

MECHATRONIC SYSTEMS
- WITH ApPLICATIONS FOR CARS -

Rolf Isermann

Institute of Automatic Control, Laboratory of Control Engineering and Process Automation

Technical University of Darmstadt, Landgraf-Georg-Str 4, D-64283 Darmstadt, Germany
e-mail: isermann@irtl.rt.e-technik.th-darmstadt.de

Abstract: The integration of mechanical processes and microelectronics towards mechatronic systems
opens new possibilities as well for the design of mechanical components as for automatic functions. The
contribution discusses tirst the involved mechanical components and machines and the ways of integra-
tion. Then the different automation functions are described in the frame of intelligent control systems
which contain multilevel control functions, a knowledge base, and inference mechanisms. Multilevel
feedback control for mechanical systems comprises lower level and higher level control, including e.g.
nonlinear adaptive control and fuzzy control. The inclusion of model based supervision and fault
diagnosis is a further development step. Two examples of mechatronic systems for cars are shown, like
an adaptive suspension system and selftuning damping of drive chain oscillations,

Keywords: mechatronic systems, intelligent control, nonlinear control, adaptive control, supervision,
fault diagnosis, adaptive suspension, selftuning damping of drive chain oscillations.

INTRODUCTION

Mechanical systems are increasingly integrated with actua-

tors, sensors and electronics. Besides the basic energy flow
in the mechanical system an information flow in the elec-
tronic system enables a variety of automatic functions. This
leads to mechatronic systems which consist of

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mechanics (mechanical engineering, precision mecha-
nics) and coupled processes (e.g. thermal, electrical)
electronics (microelectronics, power electronics, mea-
surement and actuator technology)
information technology (systems theory, automation,

l······8··'~···J
communication, software-design, artificial intelligence)

see e.g. lEE (1990), Bradley et al (1991), McConaill et al

(1991), Schweitzer (1992), Isermann (1993, 1996), Fig. 1.
The design of the functions within mechatronic systems is
performed as well on the mechanical as on the digital elec-
tronic side. Herewith the mutual interrelations play an im- Fig. 1 Integration of mechanics, electronics, and infor-
portant role and the creation of synergetic effects. mation technology leads to mechatronic systems

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pending on the kind of the mechanical system the intensity within a given frame and to govern it towards a certain
of the single development steps is different. For precision goal". Hence, intelligent mechatronic systems can be de-
mechanical devices already fairly integrated mechatronic veloped, ranging from "low-degree intelligent", Isermann
systems do exist. The influence of the electronics on me- (1996), as intelligent actuators, to "fairly intelligent sys-
chanical elements may be considerable, as shown by adap- tems", as e.g. self navigating automatic guided vehicles.
tive dampers, anti-blocking system brakes and automatic
gears. However, complete machines and vehicles show first r-------------------------, r---------------
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a mechatronic design of their elements and then slowly a : linlil ce l : r :lcS
man - machine
redesign of parts of the overall structure as can be observed ! . 8 gICS. r==1 interaction : !
in the development of machine tools, robots and vehicle .a:SI.I qualitative
fCasoning
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quantitative
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bodies. e: : :
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managment ',C
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Table 2 indicates some properties of conventional and me- :s :
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_ management I:
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cxternal-
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colDDlwllcation
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chatronic systems and the advantages gained by the inte-
gration and Table 3 some examples for mechatronic sys- ~~~~~~[~~~~~~~~~~~li~~~~~~ ~~~]~~~~~~li~~~
tems for cars r
i tasks , seh.duI.,
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1 management 1 i
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2. INFORMATION PROCESSING STRUCTURE :

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documentation
past ( memory) , prodietion
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coordination
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The information processing within mechatronic systems .o! ! :::
may range between simple control functions and intelligent
control, as shown in Fig. 2. An intelligent control system is
organized as an on-line expert system and comprises
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ve
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multi control functions (executive functions) : F=I>::
knowledge base il qer 11 :; li =~~v.l i
inference mechanism
communication interfaces
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The on-line control functions are usually organized in multi r----- ----------- ------------- -------

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levels: ~ actuators process sensors ~

• level I: low level control (feedforward, feedback)
level 2: high level control (advanced control)
level 3: supervision incl. fault diagnosis
level 4: optimization, coordination
level 5: process management
The knowledge base contains quantitative and qualitative
knowledge. The quantitative part operates with analytic
(mathematical) process models, parameter and state estima-
tion methods, analytic design methods (e.g. for control and
fault detection), and quantitative optimization methods. Si-
milar modules hold for the qualitative knowledge, e.g. in
form of rules (fuzzy and soft computing). Further knowl-
edge is the past history in the memory and the possibility to
predict the behaviour. Finally tasks or schedules must be
known. The inference mechanism draws conclusions either
by quantitative reasoning (e.g. Boolean methods) or by
qualitative reasoning (e.g. possibilistic methods) and takes
decisions for the executive functions. Finally communica-
tion between the different modules, an information manage-
ment data base and the man-machine interaction has to be
organized.
Based on these functions of an on-line expert system an
intelligent system can be build up, with the ability "to mo-
del, reason and learn the process and its automatic functions
~------------------~-------------------- ______I
Fig. 2 Advanced intelligent automatic system with
multi control levels, knowledge base, inference
mechanism and interfaces
3. MULTILEVEL CONTROL FOR MECHANICAL
SYSTEMS
Because of the integration of various functions the use of
modern tools plays an important rule for the design of the
control system if higher performances are required. It is
proposed to consider the basic control as a knowledge based
multilevelfeedback control system which is shown in Fig 3.
It is a part of the intelligent system of Fig. 2. The know-
ledge base consists of mathematical process models, para-
meter estimation and controller design methods and control
performance criteria. The feedback control is organized in
lower level and higher level controllers, a reference value
generation module and controller parameter adaptation.
With this structure the main control functions of
mechatronic systems can be organized.
The design of control systems for mechanical processes is
characterized by e.g.:

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