An Object-Oriented Approach to the Modular Design of Mechatronic Systems

The design of modern mechatronic systems involves multidisciplinary and high-level integration, creating challenging and complex tasks for industrial designers and engineers. Their development requires intricate interaction between heterogeneous subsystems, and necessitates coordinated trans-sectoral cooperation between mechanical, electronic, and software engineers. Although efforts have been made to create efficient methods to guide the design of mechatronic systems, no existing solutions solve the complexity of design problems experienced during their design. This article, therefore, proposes a structured step-by-step approach to guide the design of mechatronic systems using an object-oriented methodology. Three information streams are employed that flow through the logical layers of a mechatronic system to track requirements and define modular specifications during the design process. The proposed approach benefits those developing mechatronic systems by improving collaboration, minimizing errors, reducing chances of design failure, and helping meet the desired functionality and goal of multidisciplinary integration. To evaluate the proposed approach and demonstrate the practicability of the systematic framework, we present a case study of a library book returning system. Our results highlight the capability of the proposed approach to guarantee top-down consistency and traceability of derived specifications among logical layers and contribute to the successful integration of requirements during the design process of mechatronic systems.