Towards Intelligent Mechatronic Systems

The integration of mechanical systems and microeteetronics opens new possibilities for mechanical design and automatic functions. After a discussion of the mechanical and electronic design the organization of information processing in different levels is described. Within this frame 'low-degree intelligent' mechatronie systems can be developed which comprise adaptive control, supervision with fault diagnosis and decisions with regard to the further actions as, for example, fail safe or reconfiguration. This requires the realization of knowledge based systems in the form of on-line expert systems with learning abilities. Some aspects of the design including modeling and estimation, control and supervision methods are considered. Finally as an example an intelligent magnetic actuator is shown which uses parameter estimation for adaptive control and fault detection.