This paper presents the pedagogy of mechatronics in the mechanical engineering senior capstone design classes at the University of California Los Angeles during 2011-2016. Students entering the class with little hands-on experience in mechatronics are given lectures and hands-on laboratory tutorials and practice to conceptualize, design, and realize mechatronic systems. Students are then provided with mechatronics kits to design and realize their projects that culminate in final competitions. The pedagogy attempts to provide fine balances between scalable top-down systems approach and practical bottom-up hands-on skills. As such, real-time system topics and software tools, including State Charts, data and signal flow block diagrams, prioritized real-time loops and event triggers, and CPU timing diagrams, are introduced to mechanical engineering students.
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