A report on Mechanical engineering and Robotics

Archimedes' screw was operated by hand and could efficiently raise water, as the animated red ball demonstrates.

Mohr's circle, a common tool to study stresses in a mechanical element

Training FMS with learning robot SCORBOT-ER 4u, workbench CNC Mill and CNC Lathe

An oblique view of a four-cylinder inline crankshaft with pistons

The InSight lander with solar panels deployed in a cleanroom

Composite cloth consisting of woven carbon fiber

KUKA industrial robot operating in a foundry

Puma, one of the first industrial robots

Baxter, a modern and versatile industrial robot developed by Rodney Brooks

TALON military robots used by the United States Army

Two robot snakes. Left one has 64 motors (with 2 degrees of freedom per segment), the right one 10.

Radar, GPS, and lidar, are all combined to provide proper navigation and obstacle avoidance (vehicle developed for 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge)

Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions.

Puppet Magnus, a robot-manipulated marionette with complex control systems.

Experimental planar robot arm and sensor-based, open-architecture robot controller developed at Sunderland University, UK in 2000

RuBot II can manually resolve Rubik's cubes.

TOPIO, a humanoid robot, played ping pong at Tokyo IREX 2009.

Two Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers stand with three vehicles, providing a size comparison of three generations of Mars rovers. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover (MER) test vehicle that is a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a test rover for the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed Curiosity on Mars in 2012. Sojourner is 65 cm long. The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are 1.6 m long. Curiosity on the right is 3 m long.

A robot technician builds small all-terrain robots. (Courtesy: MobileRobots, Inc.)

In addition to these core principles, mechanical engineers use tools such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and product lifecycle management to design and analyze manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, heating and cooling systems, transport systems, aircraft, watercraft, robotics, medical devices, weapons, and others.

- Mechanical engineering

Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics, electronics, bioengineering, computer engineering, control engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.

- Robotics

3 related topics with Alpha

Engineering

1 links

Use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings.

The steam engine, the major driver in the Industrial Revolution, underscores the importance of engineering in modern history. This beam engine is on display in the Technical University of Madrid.

Relief map of the Citadel of Lille, designed in 1668 by Vauban, the foremost military engineer of his age.

The Ancient Romans built aqueducts to bring a steady supply of clean and fresh water to cities and towns in the empire.

A water-powered mine hoist used for raising ore, ca. 1556

The application of the steam engine allowed coke to be substituted for charcoal in iron making, lowering the cost of iron, which provided engineers with a new material for building bridges. This bridge was made of cast iron, which was soon displaced by less brittle wrought iron as a structural material

The solar furnace at Odeillo in the Pyrénées-Orientales in France can reach temperatures up to 3500 C

Design of a turbine requires collaboration of engineers from many fields, as the system involves mechanical, electro-magnetic and chemical processes. The blades, rotor and stator as well as the steam cycle all need to be carefully designed and optimized.

A drawing for a booster engine for steam locomotives. Engineering is applied to design, with emphasis on function and the utilization of mathematics and science.

A computer simulation of high velocity air flow around a Space Shuttle orbiter during re-entry. Solutions to the flow require modelling of the combined effects of fluid flow and the heat equations.

$Graphic representation of a minute fraction of the WWW, demonstrating hyperlinks$

Robotic Kismet can produce a range of facial expressions.

Radar, GPS, lidar, ... are all combined to provide proper navigation and obstacle avoidance (vehicle developed for 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge)

Engineers, scientists and technicians at work on target positioner inside National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber

The International Space Station is used to conduct science experiments in space

Genetically engineered mice expressing green fluorescent protein, which glows green under blue light. The central mouse is wild-type.

Leonardo da Vinci, seen here in a self-portrait, has been described as the epitome of the artist/engineer. He is also known for his studies on human anatomy and physiology.

Some of Archimedes' inventions as well as the Antikythera mechanism required sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing, two key principles in machine theory that helped design the gear trains of the Industrial Revolution, and are still widely used today in diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.

He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist.

Mechatronics

1 links

Aerial Euler diagram from RPI's website describes the fields that make up mechatronics

Mechatronics, also called mechatronics engineering, is a sub major of mechanical engineering and an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electronic and electrical engineering systems, and also includes a combination of robotics, electronics, computer science, telecommunications, systems, control, and product engineering.

Mechanical engineering

Kinematic quantities of a classical particle: mass m, position r, velocity v, acceleration a.

Kinematics

0 links

Subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the motion of points, bodies , and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause them to move.

The distance travelled is always greater than or equal to the displacement.

Relative velocities between two particles in classical mechanics.

Figure 2: Velocity and acceleration for nonuniform circular motion: the velocity vector is tangential to the orbit, but the acceleration vector is not radially inward because of its tangential component aθ that increases the rate of rotation: dω/dt = aθ /R.

Each particle on the wheel travels in a planar circular trajectory (Kinematics of Machinery, 1876).

The movement of each of the components of the Boulton & Watt Steam Engine (1784) is modeled by a continuous set of rigid displacements.

Figure 1: The angular velocity vector Ω points up for counterclockwise rotation and down for clockwise rotation, as specified by the right-hand rule. Angular position θ(t) changes with time at a rate ω(t) = dθ/dt.

Illustration of a four-bar linkage from Kinematics of Machinery, 1876

In mechanical engineering, robotics, and biomechanics kinematics is used to describe the motion of systems composed of joined parts (multi-link systems) such as an engine, a robotic arm or the human skeleton.