Mission & Overview:

Mission:

The Mechatronics Research Laboratory (MRL) was established in 2005 to facilitate teaching and research in the areas of Mechatronics and Intelligent Systems, Diagnostics/Prognostics, Advanced Control Systems, Modeling and Simulation, Drive-By-Wire Systems, and Sensors & Algorithms.

MRL is aimed at creating high-tech workforce in the area of mechatronics and intelligent systems by providing appropriate training to the students in order to meet the needs of these rapidly changing technologies and provide services to industry for promoting new technologies.

Overview:

MRL is equipped with state of the art rapid control prototyping hardware and software which are used to conduct fundamental research, promote applied research activities, attract industrial projects, and teach the next generation engineering and technology students. MRL also hosts a number of high-end workstations to conduct research in the area of modeling and simulation. The lab has a real-time hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulator for an on-demand all-wheel-drive systems powered by an 800MHz PowerPC based real-time hardware by dSPACE. This HIL simulator is used to validate the control system design for this system. Another real-time hardware-in-loop (HIL) bench for a steer-by-wire (SBW) system, powered by an 800MHz PowerPC based real-time hardware by dSPACE, is being commissioned in this lab (2007). A Linux machine with Dual Xeon Processors is used for parallel real time simulation of complex engine systems. This project has shown that the simulation speed of complex physical models can be significantly improved by parallelizing the SIMULINK model. This project was funded by Cummins, Inc.. Also, two high end Pentium 4 Windows based workstations are being used for research projects on Model-Based Fault Tolerant Control of Steer-By-Wire Systems and the design of Optimal Control System for an On-Demand All-Wheel Drive System for Hybrid Vehicles. Funding is sought from National Science Foundation for the Steer-By-Wire project. Additional funding is being sought to develop a Microwave Aided Sinter Forming (MASF) process for high temperature components, also from NSF.

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