In what direction is mechatronics developing?

　　 Mechatronics is an interdisciplinary field integrating mechanics, electronics, optics, control, computer, and information technologies. Its development and progress depend on and promote the development and progress of related technologies. Therefore, the main development directions of mechatronics are as follows:

　　 Intelligence

Intelligence is an important development direction of mechatronics technology in the 21st century. Artificial intelligence is increasingly valued in the research of mechatronics builders, and the intelligence of robots and CNC machine tools is an important application. The "intelligence" mentioned here is a description of machine behavior. Based on control theory, it absorbs new ideas and methods from artificial intelligence, operations research, computer science, fuzzy mathematics, psychology, physiology, and chaos dynamics to simulate human intelligence, giving it the ability to judge, reason, think logically, and make independent decisions to achieve higher control objectives. Admittedly, it is impossible and unnecessary to make mechatronics products have exactly the same intelligence as humans. However, high-performance, high-speed microprocessors make it entirely possible and necessary for mechatronics products to have low-level intelligence or some human intelligence.

　　 Modularization

Modularization is an important and challenging project. Due to the large number of types and manufacturers of mechatronics products, the research and development of mechatronics product units with standard mechanical interfaces, electrical interfaces, power interfaces, and environmental interfaces is a very complex but crucial task. For example, developing a power unit that integrates deceleration, intelligent speed regulation, and a motor; a control unit with functions such as vision, image processing, identification, and ranging; and various mechanical devices capable of performing typical operations. This allows for the rapid development of new products using standard units, and it can also increase production scale. This requires the establishment of various standards to ensure the matching and interfacing of various components and units. Due to conflicts of interest, it is difficult to establish international or domestic standards in this area in the near term, but it can be gradually formed by establishing some large enterprises. Obviously, the benefits brought by the standardization and serialization of electrical products can be confirmed. Whether for enterprises producing standard mechatronics units or enterprises producing mechatronics products, scale will bring a bright future to mechatronics enterprises.

　　 Networking

In the 1990s, a prominent achievement in computer technology was network technology. The rise and rapid development of network technology have brought tremendous changes to science and technology, industrial production, politics, military affairs, education, and people's daily lives. Various networks connect the global economy and production into one piece, and competition among enterprises will also be globalized. Once new mechatronics products are developed, as long as their functions are unique and their quality is reliable, they will quickly sell well globally. Due to the prevalence of networks, various remote control and monitoring technologies based on networks are flourishing, and the terminal equipment for remote control is itself a mechatronics product. Fieldbus and LAN technologies are a major trend in the networking of home appliances. Using a home network (homenet) to connect various home appliances into a computer-centered computer-integrated appliance system (CIAS) allows people to share the convenience and joy brought by various high technologies at home. Therefore, mechatronics products are undoubtedly developing towards networking.

　　 Miniaturization

Miniaturization emerged in the late 1980s, referring to the trend of mechatronics developing towards miniature machines and the micro-field. It is referred to abroad as Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), generally referring to mechatronics products with geometric dimensions no larger than 1 cm³, and developing towards the micron and nanometer levels. Micro-mechatronics products are small, energy-efficient, and flexible in movement, and have unparalleled advantages in biomedicine, military, and information aspects. The bottleneck in the development of micro-mechatronics lies in micro-mechanical technology. The processing of micro-mechatronics products uses precision processing technology, namely ultra-precision technology, which includes two categories: lithography and etching technologies.

　　 Green

The development of industry has brought tremendous changes to people's lives. On the one hand, there is an abundance of material and comfortable living; on the other hand, resources are dwindling, and the ecological environment is severely polluted. As a result, people call for the protection of environmental resources and a return to nature. The concept of green products emerged under this call, and greening is a trend of the times. Green products, during their design, manufacturing, use, and disposal lifecycle, meet specific environmental protection and human health requirements, are harmless or minimally harmful to the ecological environment, and have extremely high resource utilization rates. Designing green mechatronics products has a promising future. The greening of mechatronics products mainly refers to the fact that they do not pollute the ecological environment during use and can be recycled after scrapping.

　　 Systematization

One of the characteristic manifestations of systematization is that the system architecture further adopts an open and modular bus structure. The system can be flexibly configured, arbitrarily trimmed and combined, while seeking to achieve coordinated control and integrated management of multiple subsystems. The second is the greatly enhanced communication function. In addition to RS232, there are also RS485, DCS personalization. Future mechatronics will pay more attention to the relationship between products and people. The personalization of mechatronics has two meanings. One is that the end users of mechatronics products are people, and how to endow mechatronics products with human intelligence, emotions, and humanity is becoming increasingly important, especially for household robots. The higher level is human-machine integration. The other is to imitate biological mechanisms and develop various mechatronics products. In fact, many mechatronics products are inspired by animals.