...here's what's on our mind.
Recently Gizmodo put up an article about a project one of our interns was working on while she was here at Pocobor. The project is a ring bearer robot for her sister’s wedding. I remember her working on it while she was here, and thinking, this is going to be a very interesting wedding. I’m glad everything worked out well, and hopefully the robot didn’t drink too much and hit on the DJ equipment. Not funny? Ok, here’s the full article.
A prototype version of the soft morphing blob robot.
I recently heard about a robot being developed jointly by iRobot and researchers at the University of Chicago that sounds like science fiction come to life. The concept is a soft, shape-shifting robot that moves by something called “jamming skin enabled locomotion.” Check out the video that the researchers have released that does a much better job than I can of explaining the ideas behind the technology and showing their prototype in action (to skip the details and get to the action, scroll to 1:50):
I am excited about this project for several reasons. First of all, there are some very interesting potential applications enabled by the robot’s ability to morph its shape and traverse complex terrain. Such a device could squeeze through small holes or cracks and be an extremely valuable tool for rescue operations (think collapsed buildings, for instance) as well as national security purposes (I would guess that this is why DARPA is funding the project).
Second of all, I think the project is a great example of a concept that is captivating enough to generate excitement in people who wouldn’t normally care about advances in robotics. The idea is so fanciful and yet at the same time easy to understand that it has a way of capturing the imagination (for me, at least). And anything that gets more people interested in science, technology and engineering is good news in my book.
A recent email thread from bird-watchers in my hometown got me thinking about the interaction between technology, nature, and humans. An osprey, a fish-eating bird of prey, named Mr. Hannah, has traveled over 3,000 miles south from New England into the Amazon over the past few weeks, and thanks to an electronic transmitter strapped onto him, humans now have even more reason to envy birds and their worldly travels. We may be able to use calculus, and we’re smart enough to worry about the future, but I’d bet that you might trade some brain power for a pair of wings and a self-guided tour of the globe. The maps show the September and October journey of Mr. Hannah down into South America. See this website for further detail of Mr. Hannah’s journey.
The specifics of bird migrations have long been an incomplete puzzle to scientists, but with data from birds such as Mr. Hannah the Osprey, the puzzle pieces are falling into place. Many technologies have converged to make this possible. GPS and satellite communication hardware have become small enough to be carried by a bird, batteries have reached a critical size, power, and weight to be highly portable, and information systems now exist to receive and manage the data as it is sent from remote transmitters.
There is no doubt that this miniaturization trend will continue to accelerate. The limits of size, power, and complexity will be pushed to satisfy our increasingly demanding expectations and will enable scientific investigation, such as that seen with Mr. Hannah, that was impossible just a few years ago. New technologies will allow huge leaps in what we know and understand about nature and our planet, and because these technological challenges lie at the heart of Pocobor’s expertise, we’re looking forward to being part of the journey.
The actual design process is a little more complicated than this.
One of the things we’ve found ourselves talking about a lot lately around the office is the design process for smart or mechatronic products and what makes it unique. Because design processes in general are so open-ended, they are difficult to speak broadly about but I think that effective mechatronic design requires its own approach and is worth thinking about.
First off, I actually think that the term “design process” is a bit of a misnomer in general and particularly for smart product design. To me, the word “process” implies a set or fixed course of action almost like following a checklist or recipe to arrive at a predetermined outcome (in this case, the final design). However, because the goals and parameters surrounding any given design problem can be so varied, it is impossible to specify a universally good design process. The path followed during the creation of a good design can be different for every design and every designer.
For smart products, which cross the boundaries of traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical design, electrical engineering and software development, to name a few), this is particularly true. The increased number of design considerations resulting from the large number of facets of the design increases the number of potential design paths – both good and bad – significantly. However, it is still possible to identify some common factors in the creation of a good design. Instead of a process, though, I prefer to think of it as a mindset that facilitates good design.
It can be useful to think of designing a system or device as a series of trade-offs – consider the ever-present cost vs. performance tradeoff or something like the relationship between engine horsepower and gas mileage. One of the things that differentiates mechatronics from more traditional design is that the number of tradeoffs and inter-relationships is usually higher. When the designer makes a choice regarding (for instance) the mechanical design, s/he has to consider not only the ramifications for the other parts of the mechanical design but also how that choice will affect the electronics and software of the system. To design effectively, the designer must embrace a mindset that considers tradeoffs and consequences that may not usually be considered for certain subsections of the design.
Saying this isn’t very profound – it’s basically common sense. However, following this line of thought has some practical ramifications for designers of mechatronic systems. The main conclusion is that designers of smart products should cultivate skills across traditional engineering disciplines so that they are able to understand and appropriately weigh all of the applicable factors when making decisions.
It is certainly possible for a mixed team of traditional engineers (e.g. mechanical engineer + electrical engineer + programmer) to create a well-designed mechatronic system. However, I would argue that the level of collaboration and communication required for this to occur in practice is prohibitively time-consuming and difficult for most design problems. Instead, I think the most effective practice is to involve designers who have some expertise in all of the relevant fields, which allows them to easily consider all of the facets of the system together. Although the time required to become (and remain) conversant in multiple disciplines typically precludes brilliant-guru level expertise in any one, an effective design team can be assembled for any given problem that combines multi-disciplinary mechatronics engineers with traditional engineers as needed.
Smart products are becoming ubiquitous in our lives. From the car you drive to the temperature control system in your house to the digital camera in your pocket, systems that used to be strictly mechanical are increasingly integrating microcontrollers and becoming smarter. This new class of systems demands a new mindset and a new approach to enable the most efficient and effective creation of new designs.
I was watching Return of the Jedi the other night for the 723rd time and was amazed at how well the original 3 are holding up in terms of special effects given advances in the field over the past 30 years. There’s a scene in the movie where Darth Vader hands the Emperor Luke’s light saber, to which the emperor responds
“Ah, yes, a Jedi’s weapon. Much like your
father’s. By now you must know your father
can never be turned from the dark side. So
will it be with you.”
Now for those uninitiated geeks out there, one task every Jedi must do on their path towards Jedihood is to build their own light saber. Because of this every light saber is unique, and carries the distinctive fingerprint of the Jedi who constructed it.
But what would be the appropriate mechatronic “light saber”? It would have to be something that encompasses mechatronics (software component, electronics component, and mechanical component), something that every mechatronics engineer builds at some point during their training (also known as grad school) and something that would bear the distinct mark of the engineer who built it. The more I thought about it, the more the answer seemed obvious …
an autonomous robot.
An autonomous robot, perhaps better than any other product, completely captures all aspects of mechatronics. It needs a well designed mechanical system in order to move around and interact with its environment, it needs electronics in order to sense the world around it and drive all its actuators, and finally it needs software to take all its different inputs and make decisions. At some point during their mechatronics course work every mechatronics engineer has had to build a robot. Because the design of a robot can take so many different shapes and forms, it would be almost impossible for two engineers designing independently to design the same robot.
So, I would like to propose a challenge to the world: before you become a true mechatronics engineer, you must build your own light saber robot. Now, unlike with Jedis, there is no Yoda figure to judge and pass your robot (actually there is, Professor Ed Carryer of Stanford, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his days deciding which robots are worthy enough to allow their designers to call themselves a mechatronic engineer), so it is up to the individual engineer to judge his robot worthy of mechatronic acceptability. If this catches on, this actually shouldn’t be a problem, because employers would expect potential hires to bring their mechatronic light saber to all interviews.
Ultimately my dream of having all mechatronic engineers build their own robot in order to be considered a true mechatronics engineer is to help foster a sense of community and fraternity around mechatronics. I believe the more mechatronics engineers feel tied to one another, the more we will collaborate with each other, leading to greater and more ambitious projects.
The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine (a non-engineer) about Pocobor and mechatronics (smart products). It was a meandering conversation about what mechatronics is, how you make something mechatronic, where mechatronics is going and such. (I wrote this post a few months ago which describes what mechatronics is in detail.) At one point she asked me what my favorite mechatronic product is. Without the slightest hesitation I answered “the automobile”. She was a bit surprised, thinking I would say something like a robot, or some other crazy gizmo. The truth is, cars have always been a driving (pun intended) force behind my desire to be an engineer. And a big reason I became a mechatronics engineer is because almost every car on the road today is a mechatronic product.
Cars weren’t always mechatronic. In fact for most of their history they were very much a mechanical system, with a bit of electronics (radio, lighting, etc.) here and there. However, what made a car a car (i.e. the engine, the carburetor, the suspension, and the transmission) were intricate pieces of mechanical hardware (with the exception, I guess, of the spark ignition system). It wasn’t until the end of the 70s and the beginning of 80s that cars started to become mechatronic in nature with the introduction of electronic fuel injection, and flow rate sensors such as the Bosch L-H Jetronic systems to replace carburetors (read more about fuel injection here).
With the advent of cheaper and more powerful microcontrollers, as well as cheaper and more accurate sensors, came such breakthroughs as anti-lock braking systems, supplemental restraint systems (airbags), and electronic stability control. Today automobiles are the definition of mechatronics. They combine advanced software, with high-tech electronics, and elegant design to create amazing pieces of machinery. Everything from the transmission to the fuel injection to the valve timing to adaptive cruise control is controlled in some way by an embedded microcontroller, relying on accurate yet inexpensive sensors ranging from accelerometers to flow meters to position sensors.
It is also no coincidence that automotive technology has advanced step for step with advances in mechatronics. The automobile, with its economy of scale and demand for precision sensors and microcontrollers to control the ever more advanced systems found inside, is a major, if not the biggest, driver of technological advances in mechatronics and the steep decrease in component prices.
But that is only a part of why I love the automobile, and why I consider it my favorite mechatronic example. The other part is because it has the ability to inspire, to make you stop whatever you are doing, and stare. True, not every car designed elicits such emotion, but when a car that is truly exceptional drives by, everyone looks in awe and desire, and you don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate it. That is the rare thing about automobiles compared to most other products out there. When done right it makes everyone, from the youngest school boy, to the oldest grandma appreciate excellence in design, the same way a Picasso or Monet might.
Personal Metrics and Analytics are Sexy!
Companies have always been data driven. In order to make educated business decisions, you analyze figures and utilize typical business metrics. These metrics help to assess the health and direct the future of your business. Technology, specifically related to smart products, is allowing the same methodology to be applied to our personal lives (although the metrics may be quite different).
I realized yesterday how data driven my personal life is, whether it is my physical health and fitness, energy usage at home, or my personal finances, and how it is similar to the way we manage Pocobor. I now have affordable (if not free) access to tools that gather and analyze information on every aspect of my life, which help advise appropriate and effective decisions. There are tons of these products available; below is a listing of a few of the products I use or am excited to try to help me manage my personal life:
Fitness/Health
Money/Finances
Energy Expenditure
It’s exciting for Pocobor to be part of this revolution by developing smart products related to those listed above. Data and data analytics in our personal and professional lives is becoming more and more accessible. Consumers can now assess their personal lives and identify poignant changes to better their lives with simple and effective products available to them.
He doesn’t know, either.
Last week Akbar tackled the idea of whether the word “mechatronics” is effective in describing our field to people. However, that discussion is based on a more fundamental question – what do we actually do (i.e. what is the thing that “mechatronics” or any other word is actually trying to describe)?
To answer this question, I think it is important to first distinguish between the tools we use and the purposes we apply them towards. A good analogy might be to consider an engineer at an automotive company. Their field (the collection of tools, techniques and concepts they use to do their job) may be mechanical engineering, but their application (the project that they are working on) is a car. Similarly, I would say that mechatronics describes our field but that our applications may be much more varied.
The literal definition of mechatronics is actually pretty straightforward – our niche lies around the intersection of mechanical engineering, electronics, and software. The semi-coherent pinwheel of death / Venn diagram shown below is a nightmare to parse but actually does a decent job of summing up the different areas that fall within our purview (with the qualification that we work on all of the intersection areas, not just the “Mechatronics” one). However, neither the diagram nor the above definition resonates in any meaningful way with the vast majority of people. Because of this, I think it is probably more effective to evangelize our field in terms of what mechatronics allows us to do as opposed to how we do it.
Perfectly comprehensible, right?
Because we are a consulting firm, we work on a wide variety of applications, from cleantech projects to medical devices to consumer products to automotive systems. However, if I had to pick one common thread that links virtually all of the work we do, I would say that we generally work on making devices and systems smarter. This can involve changing the way a user interacts with something or making the device able to function more effectively independently from the user.
Because saying “make things smarter” is pretty vague, let’s consider some examples. Imagine a house that turns off the lights when people aren’t in the room to save electricity, or a coffee maker that starts brewing your coffee in the morning before you get up so it is ready when you come downstairs. Picture a system that keeps track of your workouts at the gym and helps you track your progress and improve your technique, or even a Segway (by the way, all of these products currently exist). Making products smarter could mean equipping them with better communication technology so that you can control them remotely via a computer or phone. Or it could mean adding sensors to allow them to be aware of the situation around them so that they can respond in the most useful possible way. Finally, it often means integrating motors or other actuators so that the system is able to actually affect the physical world.
At the end of the day, we believe that mechatronics and its applications to smart products can enable a staggeringly broad set of improvements to our quality of life. Our goal is to get other people as excited about it as we are.
Over the last year and a half I have talked to many people about Pocobor and mechatronics. These conversations have proved to be more difficult than I expected. Some people (mostly engineers) understand exactly what we do, some people kind of understand, but a vast majority of people only take away that Pocobor is some sort of engineering consultancy and our work is probably complicated and boring.
When we started Pocobor, we knew mechatronics was not a terribly common term outside of our field and we understood we would spend a good portion of our marketing effort on actively educating people about mechatronics. We were, and still are, excited about being on the forefront of evangelizing mechatronics to the world and getting people excited about how mechatronics will shape the future by improving the products and services of tomorrow. However, we weren’t aware how uncommon the term was, especially since mechatronics is a fairly mature field.
The term mechatronics was coined over 40 years ago by Tetsuro Mori, a Japanese engineer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechatronics). Today, small microcontrollers are readily available from a variety of manufacturers and cost less than a couple of dollars each. People in the U.S. use mechatronic products every single day, from their cars to their microwaves to their smart phones. Specific mechatronic engineering programs are even available from many universities, such as Professor Ed Carryer’s program at Stanford University (ME218).
Given its ubiquity in our lives, one might think that people would already have a pretty good idea about what mechatronics is. And yet, for the most part, it is still unknown outside of engineering circles. Personally, I think the problem comes down to the word mechatronics itself.
Mechatronics is a portmanteau (portman – wha?) of the words “mechanical” and “electronic”. It makes perfect sense; after all, mechatronics is the blending of mechanical systems with electrical systems and software. The problem is that when most people hear mechatronics they might as well be hearing gobbledygook. It is just a jumble of letters to them. They can’t visualize how the word is spelled or decipher its roots. Even if they do happen to break the word down into mechanical systems, electronics, and software, the conversation still requires a long winded explanation of how these three fields fit together and the services we provide. This makes it difficult for people to internalize and talk about later. But even worse, it makes some people tune us out as soon as we start talking because they think what we are about to say is going to be technical and boring.
This is the question we are asking ourselves at Pocobor. We like the word mechatronics. It’s not a word we just made up. It’s a real field and aptly describes what we do. However, we also need to be sensitive to the very real idea that it may be in our best interest to find a word that the general public can understand or can immediately identify with. One such example is Smart Product Design. It’s simple and understandable. However, is Smart Product Design as a term any more informative to the general public about we do than mechatronics? Because mechatronics is still unknown outside of certain circles, regardless of what word or phrase we choose to describe it will still require some explanation. I believe the solution may lie in not the word itself but in perfecting a succinct, understandable explanation..No term can be a silver bullet; there has to be a discussion.
In general, we try to tailor our message depending on our audience (engineer vs. non-technical individual, medical device field vs. clean tech, etc.) and we are always trying out different ways to best describe Pocobor. Mechatronics is a growing field that is becoming more and more prevalent in our lives. The challenge for us is understanding how to best convey this message.
Subscribe
