Design and implementation of an enhanced framework for complex mechatronic systems software development

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1659260 (Table of Contents)

Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary engineering and design eld that includes a combination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineer- ing and control engineering. Operation of systems within this eld depends on the smooth cooperation of several layers, namely: hardware, electronics, computer, operating system and software. Regarding the realization of system operation and control, creating human-system interaction and recording information related to the operation of the system; computers and softwares are inevitable parts of the com- plex mechatronic systems. Therefore, design and development of the software can not be separated from the overall system design process. In order to incorporate the software into the system modeling process and more importantly, to modify the modeling approach in such a way that system components can be easily represented by software units; a new kind of modeling methodology has to be proposed and then supported by the related common procedure, tools and building blocks. The most basic design consideration for this methodology would be the decomposability of the whole system into lowest level building units that can be directly implementable using current software engineering methods. Based on the problem de nition and the other factors that motivated the e orts put within the context of this study, a framework is created and realized to be used for the software development of any kind of system that falls within the complex mechatronic system concept. Proposed framework is called Complex Mechatronics Systems Software Framework (CMS- FRAME). As the name implies, CMSFRAME is planned with an intention to cover all mechatronic systems with any type of components and in any level of complexity. Regarding the formulation and creation of CMSFRAME, the intention was to create a blend of the best practices taken so far and to enhance with some extra features which can not be found within the frameworks that are already developed to serve for similar purposes in mechatronics or related elds. The systems that are developed in Sabanci University MicroMechatronics Laboratory during the period of this study are all perfect examples of the so called complexity of mechatronic platforms. Thus, the proposed framework is applied for the software development of these systems, namely; Laser Assisted Micro-Machining Workstation (LAMMW) and Micro-Factory in order to evaluate applicability and performance of the frame- work components along with the methodology structured to serve as a guideline for application. As a result of experiments that were realized on both systems which were run by software developed using the proposed framework, it has been noted that both systems were fully functional and outcomes of all experiments were as targeted which can be translated to the success and the accuracy of CMSFRAME on complex mechatronic systems software development. Being the rst complex mechatronic systems framework that can serve as a system modeling tool and a software development tool at the same time with its visually representable structure that enables the creation of a system model via a graphical user interface which also allows automatic generation of source code that constitutes the system soft- ware, CMSFRAME itself stands as a substantial contribution to the related eld. Providing clear de nitions regarding the composition of packages and procedures it introduces, CMSFRAME facilitates a higher level expandability via the preparation of new packages which paves the way of covering any new functional or physical sub-component. The more it is going to be applied on di erent systems successfully, the more experience on it will be gathered based on the application notes along with the possible new components that will be implemented as additions to the initial version of the framework during these applications.