Mecha­tron­ics — an alliance of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and elec­tron­ics – today lies at the core of inno­va­tion. It is present in all sec­tors, lead­ing not only to very ordi­nary day-to-day objects but also to the build­ing of more com­plex items such as air­craft, satel­lites or road vehi­cles, with a much increased poten­tial. Dur­ing the Mecha­tron­ics REM2016 Con­fer­ence, which was con­vened at UTC last June, is a get-togeth­er of some of the major actors in this field, and Inter­ac­tions was for­tu­nate enough to be able to inter­view the two main pro­po­nents, Jamie Paik and Michaël Gau­thi­er, who offered us their vision of mecha­tron­ics in com­ing years. 

Mechatronics – a story of synergistic action

Mecha­tron­ics can be seen as a syn­er­gis­tic com­bi­na­tion of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, elec­tron­ics, and con­trol the­o­ry and com­put­er sci­ences. It affects design and man­u­fac­tur­ing of prod­ucts for the pur­pose of opti­miz­ing their fea­tures, adding new func­tion­al­i­ties. It indeed meets a real indus­tri­al expec­ta­tion, con­nect­ed to our con­sumer soci­ety, increas­ing­ly eager as it is to acquire and ben­e­fit from tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion on an inter­na­tion­al scale and is to be found every­where and at the ori­gin of con­sid­er­able pro­gress­es which we can hear about in the media head­lines, e.g., dri­ver­less cars, to give but one example. 

UTC, a key actor to support the cause of mechatronics in France

UTC can muster con­sid­er­able forces to bol­ster its rep­u­ta­tion in mecha­tron­ics and become a priv­i­leged part­ner for a great many indus­tri­al­ists. As of 2008, it set up a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CETIM Sen­lis (acronym for ‘tech­ni­cal cen­tre for mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing’) to set up an Mecha­tron­ics Insti­tute (IM), which is a pole for train­ing, R&D and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer oper­a­tions; in terms of its train­ing offer, the IM offers sev­er­al pos­si­bil­i­ties for UTC stu­dents depend­ing on the diplo­ma they are going for, like for instance the MARS spe­cial­ty (mecha­tron­ics, actu­a­tors, robo­t­i­sa­tion and sys­tems) or the spe­cial­ist Master’s degree SMA (Mecha­tron­ic sys­tems and advanced mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing. Thanks to its Daniel Thomas Inno­va­tion Cen­tre, UTC offers pro­to­typ­ing facil­i­ties – a key ingre­di­ent for mecha­tron­ics – which are not only ide­al­ly suit­ed to meet the expec­ta­tions of clients but also is close to entre­pre­neur­ial concerns. 

More­over, a spe­cial aca­d­e­m­ic Chair was cre­at­ed in 2009, for Hydraulics and Mecha­tron­ics, basd on the respec­tive strengths of UTC and the CETIM and enabled a widen­ing of the net­work of tech­nol­o­gy-inten­sive resources in a close rela­tion­ship with the indus­tri­al­ists. A tech­no­log­i­cal plat­form, inau­gu­rat­ed in 2014 rein­forced the Chair by con­cen­trat­ing the design & mod­el­ling tools and the exper­i­men­tal facil­i­ties. Through its train­ing for its stu­dents and through col­lec­tive research agree­ments and activ­i­ties, UTC offers a high added val­ue of skills and ser­vice for both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, where it can be observed that the needs increase continuously. 

One Conference, three events

The Mecha­tron­ics REM 2016 Con­fer­ence enabled the orga­niz­ers to update the atten­dees and to present var­i­ous research results. But in fact, beyond d the sin­gle Con­fer­ence, there were in fact three events: the 11^th Fran­co-Japan­ese Con­fer­ence on Mecha­tron­ics, the 9^th Europe-Asia Con­fer­ence on Mecha­tron­ics and 17^th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on REMs (Research and Edu­ca­tion in Mecha­tron­ics). “The 17^th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on REMs ini­tial­ly was the base-line for the two first-named events”, details Michaël Gau­thi­er, Direc­tor of the AS2M Depart­ment (Con­trol The­o­ry and Micro-Mecha­tron­ic Sys­tems) at the FEMTO-ST Insti­tute, Besan­con.   “It makes lots of sense to com­bine research and teach­ing. On a reg­u­lar basis, the UTC stu­dents dis­sem­i­nate the ped­a­gog­i­cal con­tents of their cours­es in the indus­tri­al milieus and that adds a strong lever­age effect; knowl­edge spreads in this man­ner and it is impor­tant to attach high qual­i­ty to the oper­a­tions. With new indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, the blend of research and teach­ing also allow for a tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer to the socio-eco­nom­ic world and to Soci­ety in gen­er­al and this proves very effi­cient way to do this”.  “Thir­ty years ago, very lit­tle impor­tance was giv­en to these sub­jects. Today, we seek to iden­ti­fy inter­dis­ci­pli­nary solu­tions, added Jamie Paik, Direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Recon­fig­urable Robot­ics (RRL), Ecole Poly­tech­nique Fédérale Lau­sanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

So, can you explain the role for mechatronics today?

Nowa­days, you find mecha­tron­ics almost every­where, e.g., in the space sec­tor (satel­lites …), aero­nau­tics (air­craft sta­bil­i­ty con­trol …), road vehi­cles (ESP, ABS …), con­sumer appli­ances (wash­ing machines, print­ers …), or equip­ment (adapt­ing pro­duc­tion means, on line qual­i­ty assur­ance and con­trol). “The idea from a day-to-day stand­point, is that phys­i­cal devices inte­grate increas­ing quan­ti­ties of elec­tron­ic com­po­nents, sen­sors, actu­a­tors with a pos­si­ble inter­face (EDP or oper­a­tional) with humans. A sym­bol­ic exam­ple is the motor­car: 20 years ago, you had an essen­tial­ly mechan­i­cal assem­bly and the repairs in garages were car­ried out by mechan­ics. Now, when you take your car to the garage, they plug it in to an inter­face and the sys­tem diag­noses the prob­lem. Thus we have seen a com­plete rev­o­lu­tion here, where elec­tron­ics has grad­u­al­ly been inte­grat­ed — some would say with on-board intel­li­gence, or at least the sens­ing of infor­ma­tion at var­i­ous mechan­i­cal points”, explains Michaël Gau­thi­er. “This is a glob­al trend with less and less pure­ly mechan­i­cal parts and we indeed see increas­ing num­bers of con­nect­ed objects arriv­ing in our lives and envi­ron­ment. We now have to begin work­ing on designs that asso­ciate mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing with con­trol elec­tron­ics and this calls for high­ly spe­cif­ic tal­ents and skills, hence the impor­tance of hav­ing appro­pri­ate cours­es to have sol­id enough bases in both fields to assure the syn­the­sis”, he adds.

Some very concrete progress

In their respec­tive lab­o­ra­to­ries, Jamie Paik and Michaël Gau­thi­er, are devel­op­ing sys­tem that rev­o­lu­tion­ize our lives and are applic­a­ble to numer­ous sec­tors. At EPFL, Lau­sanne, Jamie Paik is focus­ing main­ly on soft robots. “By “soft robots” we are refer­ring to ‘devices’ in sil­i­con or rub­ber, for exam­ple. They are fair­ly easy to make, there are numer­ous projects in mechan­i­cal or robot­ic spheres, but it is very dif­fi­cult to assess the size, the notion of scales is real­ly a prob­lem”, she explains.  “One of our appli­ca­tions is a belt with actu­a­tors that allow per­sons with mus­cu­lar dis­or­ders in their abdom­i­nal region or legs to regain a degree of mobil­i­ty thanks to the local addi­tion­al rigid­i­ty offered by the belt. This is impor­tant for day-to-day move­ments, such as the sim­ple climb­ing or descend­ing of stairs! The tech­nol­o­gy we use is flex­i­ble and it is non-inva­sive. Now we are seek­ing to reduce the weight fac­tor and to devel­op a portable pow­er sup­ply. We are also work­ing on the con­cept called ‘robogamis’, derived from origamis, a sort of flat 2D robot such as a sheet of paper which will be fold­ed by actu­a­tors to form a 3D struc­ture. It is the pro­gram­ming that allows you to con­trol the fold-sequences and to deter­mine how a fold can be trans­formed. In this area, we have been col­lab­o­rat­ing notably with Chris­tine Prelle at UTC in regard to the actu­a­tors used. For appli­ca­tions in the med­ical sec­tor, we envi­sion robot stur­geons or uses in satel­lites, or again for our per­son­al elec­tron­ics. The pow­er sup­ply still has to be solved before we can assem­ble tru­ly portable sys­tems,” she adds.

At FEMTO-ST, Michaël Gau­thi­er is work­ing on “micro-mecha­tron­ics”, a com­pres­sion for mecha­tron­ics and micro-sys­tems, there­fore very small objects. “We design medi­um-sized (cen­time­tre) robots that can be placed on a table-top, and that will work on (with) very small com­po­nents at micro or even the nano­met­ric scale: what we call “micro-nano-manip­u­la­tion”’. We are also inves­ti­gat­ing very small, high­ly inte­grat­ed com­po­nents for appli­ca­tions in non-inva­sive surgery. For exam­ple, we have devel­oped an active endo­scope which allows the sur­geon to resect can­cer­ous nod­ules on our vocal cords. What we have is a com­plete sys­tem lodged in just 2 cm³ with two cam­eras, two lights, one actu­a­tor and a mir­ror to cor­rect posi­tion the laser scalpel. The sur­geon traces out on an image the area to be incised and the robot repro­duces pre­cise­ly his hand move­ments. This sys­tem requires lots of work to opti­mize the design, inas­much as there is not much room in the oper­a­tion tar­get ‘field’. So we make robots that assem­ble small com­po­nents that can han­dle both small and extreme­ly small objects”, he adds.

The aim is to make the sys­tems small­er and smarter, but above all else, to be more dex­ter­ous when the oper­a­tions become com­plex. “In the case of a sur­gi­cal oper­a­tion, we want to devel­op robots that have the capa­bil­i­ty to move in low-angle areas so as to access cer­tain zones while hav­ing more free­dom and more mobil­i­ty. High dex­ter­i­ty is need­ed for the appli­ca­tions and this can read­i­ly be seen in the case of com­pres­sion applied to human oocytes, know­ing that they change prop­er­ties mechan­i­cal­ly as they mature. We then test their mechan­i­cal rigid­i­ty to see if they are more or less flex­i­ble. We have also added some on-board intel­li­gence, since beyond the sen­sor there is a data pro­cess­ing which leads to a sort of prog­no­sis of the chances of the oocyte being fer­til­ized, as mea­sured “mechan­i­cal­ly”. This way we can iden­ti­fy those oocytes ready for fer­til­iza­tion (or, on the con­trary, that should be kept on hold. This pro­to­col is tied close­ly to data pro­cess­ing, we have devel­oped and the clas­si­fi­ca­tion techniques”.

Anoth­er appli­ca­tion relates to micro-assem­blies and it is Michaël Gau­thi­er who works on this theme with the start-up Per­si­pio Robot­ics, Michaël being one of the co-founders. “What we inves­ti­gate here (and make) are micro-assem­blies, on a pure­ly indus­tri­al basis, using small com­po­nents for the clock­work mech­a­nisms and the micro­elec­tron­ics, with typ­i­cal dimen­sions below the mil­lime­tre. We also are engaged in work at the nano­met­ric lev­el where there is a blos­som­ing mar­ket emerg­ing. We use scan­ning elec­tron micro­scopes (SEMs) which can even take us down to the atom­ic scale [10^-8 cm]!” Micro­ma­nip­u­la­tion is used to assem­ble the parts and are used, for exam­ple, to make chem­i­cal sub­stance sen­sors for envi­ron­men­tal con­trol and which must have an extreme­ly sen­si­tive mea­sure­ment capability.

Some ‘revolutions’ that would result from applying mechatronics

“Obvi­ous­ly, there is a wide bio­med­ical scope for appli­ca­tions”, explains Michaël Gau­thi­er, “but there still remains to intro­duce con­sid­er­able devel­op­ments in sur­gi­cal devices. No doubt in 25 years’ time we shall see oper­a­tions we sim­ply can­not do today thanks to more flex­i­ble, more func­tion­al robots. For the time being, surgery depends on the dex­ter­i­ty of the surgeon’s hands, and that has its lim­its”.  Michaël Gau­thi­er also envi­sions a rev­o­lu­tion in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals:  “We shall see a com­plete sub­sti­tu­tion for chem­i­cal based med­i­c­i­nal drugs by bio­log­i­cal com­pounds. That is to say, that we shall longer be depen­dent on drugs (in its wider con­no­ta­tion) but rather on cells that act in a med­i­c­i­nal way. Know­ing that cells have a dimen­sion of only sev­er­al tens of microns, the action of iso­lat­ing them and grow­ing them is part of pos­si­bil­i­ties for micro-robot­ics”. In like man­ner he fore­sees progress being made in the indus­tri­al world. “There is a huge need for fur­ther minia­tur­iza­tion of lots of com­po­nents! Take the exam­ple of mobile phones.  They have grown in size over recent years. They inte­grate more and more func­tions and the com­po­nents are decreas­ing in size. Their assem­bly calls for lots of oper­a­tions on these com­plex sys­tems and they can­not be done either than by hand for the time being. We do not have alter­nate solu­tions for this! We often tend­ed to think that every­thing was robo­t­ized, but bit is sim­ply because we are at the lim­its to man­u­al manip­u­la­tions. All the more so that that when you pick up an object there” is a nat­ur­al human trem­ble of some 50 microns we can hard­ly detect. But, con­se­quent­ly, we can­not han­dle objects at that scale and to do so we need robots that work under micro­scopes. With the ongo­ing micro-robot­ics rev­o­lu­tion, we shall be using a posi­tion to clear this obsta­cle and the mar­ket ahead will grow huge. I also see a snow­balling effect — robot pro­duc­tion will make their assem­bly eas­i­er. Hav­ing said this, the sys­tems too will be designed accord­ing­ly and the mar­ket for these micro-robots will sure­ly explode. As I see it, there will be a joint growth between prod­uct and robot devel­op­ments. We have, in a sense, bro­ken an ear­li­er log­ic. There was no tech­nol­o­gy pre­vi­ous­ly, so no mar­ket. We then crat­ed the tech­nol­o­gy and the mar­ket fol­lowed suit. We saw some­thing sim­i­lar in the his­to­ry of com­put­ers – there was a time only years ago, when we did not know how we were going to use them. Today, every home has one and like­wise at our work-desks”.

For Michaël Gau­thi­er, there is an even more futur­is­tic vision: that of 3D print­ing – which already exists but which soon will enable us to cre­ate and “print” mod­u­lat­ed, con­nect­ed objects, with the elec­tron­ics need­ed installed dur­ing the print process “This will no doubt occur in the Main Street mar­ket where peo­ple will be able to print their goods direct­ly, as and when need­ed”. Final­ly, the future will no doubt have strong ties with the space sec­tor indus­tries, where the advan­tage of micro-robot­ics will lie in decreased weight and com­po­nent size (weight being a key fac­tor to, the cost of launch­ing the devices into space).