Education | Courses
Through our educational activities, we strive to prepare our students for the industrial job market as well for scientific research carreers. It is our firm believe that by teaching the state-of-the-art, we advance the state-of-use.
SSIR | Servo Systems & Industrial Robots
This course deals with hardware and information processing aspects of servo systems and industrial robots. Industrial robots can be found amongst others in pick-and-place applications, assembly, and the manipulation of objects. Furthermore, with the increase in industrial automation, servo drive systems have become increasingly popular. Servo systems and robotics have become the fundamental technology for accomplishing automatic tasks and will be ubiquitous in the factory of the future, exploration robotics, medical robotics, etc. This course provides fundamentals on robotics consisting of; (1) hardware aspects reviewing key actuators and sensors; (2) robot kinematics, modelling and information processing of robot manipulators; (3) robot dynamics, dynamic representations of motion and robot control strategies; (4) robot planning and control to plan a motion and tracking a robot's movement.
ICTM | ICT & Mechatronics
This course studies the interaction between information-processing systems and the physical world in the context of mechatronic ('robotic') systems. The course is seen as an overview of concepts and methods that play important roles on the information processing side of mechatronics applications. Firstly, the basic structure and working of microcontrollers themselves is shortly described, insisting on elements that allow real-time reaction and processing of multiple tasks. A second part considers modelling and steering of complex mechatronic systems. It complements the basic methods for representation and steering/planning in a more general scope. The final part considers information acquisition and processing techniques in the context of mechatronics. Intelligent handling of high-dimensional sensor data is key for enabling appropriate actuation of mechatronic devices.
MSDS | Modelling & Simulating of Dynamic Systems
This course is about the modelling and simulation of dynamical systems to analyse the behaviour and optimizing the performance of electromechanical systems. These systems become progressively more integrated with interactions of physical phenomena stemming from different engineering domains: mechanics, fluid flow, electronics, etc. Additionally, the ubiquity of data arising from advancements in sensors allows to learn from data and extract behavioural patterns. To advance upon the design of dynamical systems one can rely on apprehending and predicting their behaviour. To optimize the operational performance, model based control approaches possess the capability to find feedforward optimal control actions. Model based system engineering provides a means to tackle the above-mentioned challenges in the engineering of physical dynamical systems. Various computational approaches are studied that are key in system engineering. This course offers; (1) tools to model multi-domain engineering systems. Systematic approaches are provided that formulate practical mathematical models of a physical process. To that end, physics-based models that are based on energetic formalisms, i.e. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, graph-based models and data-driven models are presented; (2) tools to simulate and analyse system behaviour. The accuracy of the time-based simulations requires in depth knowledge of the algorithms to calculate the future state of systems; (3) tools to optimally control nonlinear systems and optimize their performance. Deterministic and stochastic optimization techniques that underpin model based control are provided. Both continuous time and discrete time nonlinear optimal control approaches are presented. Finally, hybrid system consisting of continuous time dynamics and discrete event-driven dynamics are studied with automata and Petri net formalisms. The presented methodologies are applied on mechatronic and robotic applications such as the double pendulum, electromechanical drivetrains, car suspensions, wind turbines and robot arms.