Mechatronics in Engineering Education

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) hosted the International Seminar on Mechatronics Education on June 20-21, 2017 at DTU Skylab.

The focus of the seminar was to discuss how universities can educate engineers with interdisciplinary skill sets; ready to tackle the difficult tasks of conceptualizing, designing, implementing and operating Mechatronics-4.0 solutions.

The seminar brought together more than 60 participants; creating a forum for educators, industrialists, students, enablers and decision makers from Europe, USA and Canada. With a focus on the emerging fields of Internet of Things, Digitalisation, Cyber-physical systems and Mechatronics, the seminar included sessions on how universities try to implement these topics in educational programs, what are the current challenges in the industry, what are needs from newly educated engineers and what are the current best practices in teaching Mechatronics at the leading institutions.

In summary, the discussions concluded that a hands-on approach to teaching mechatronics is essential to stay up-to-date with the emerging trends and to meet the demands of the industry; and balancing the interdisciplinary nature of the field is one of the main challenges faced by educational institutions.

The seminar was organized by DTU and SEFI and sponsored by National Instruments and Quanser. A follow-up workshop will be organized by NI at the SEFI Annual Conference 2017, in Terceira.