Treffer: Use of Open-source Software in Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering Education - Part I: Model Simulation and Analysis.

Open-source Software (OSS) provide attractive solutions for complementing Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering (MRE) education due to their numerous advantages such as free access, customizability and wide community support, increased adoption and utilization in industry, etc. To provide a deeper insight on the current status, limitations, and potentials of the OSS, a summary of the results of an online survey, conducted among various community stakeholders, is included. Furthermore, the two parts of this contribution are intended to provide an exposure to the OSS which have the potential to be used in MRE education. To this end, two specific problems, namely, model simulation and analysis of a DC motor (Part I) and controller implementation for a 2-DOF robot manipulator (Part II), are solved using Python, Java, Modelica, GNU Octave, and Gazebo. The systems chosen for this work are some of the most-commonly encountered systems and the considered problems, i.e. model simulation, analysis, and control implementation, are fundamental problems in the context of MRE. Therefore, this work can help MRE instructors familiar with these OSS to easily integrate them into their respective courses. On the other hand, the students can also greatly benefit from this work as it provides an entry point into applying different OSS in MRErelated courses and projects. Exposure to various ways in which an MRE problem is translated into a software solution enables the students to generalize their problem-solving process across different computational tools. Students equipped with such a skillset would potentially have a flexible mindset and could make well-balanced and informed judgements when devising a solution to a real-world engineering problem. Full code scripts for each of the OSS introduced in this work, along with Matlab which is intended as a point of comparison, are included on the GitHub repository of the paper to provide free access to the community and to help with widespread adoption of the OSS in MRE higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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