PC´s and micro-controllers in mechatronics education

The mechanical engineering department at the University of Utah is developing a certificate program in mechatronics, which includes a three-quarter mechatronics sequence. This mechatronics sequence is required for all mechanical engineering students-this paper describes the mechatronics curriculum and discusses the extent to which students will use PCs and microcontrollers. The extent to which microcontroller are included in the curriculum is of particular significance to a mechanical engineering curriculum which may need an introduction to them but do not, however, require the low-level-language programming based teaching of microcontrollers