Development and evaluation of an undergraduate mechatronics course projects in Labview

Mechatronics is an integrative engineering field combining the technology of mechanics, electronics and information technology to provide enhanced products, processes and systems. It is becoming increasingly important as products are becoming more complex to design in an integrated manner. This development puts pressure on universities to produce engineers skilled in mechatronics and has motivated the development of this thesis. The objective of this research is to evaluate the current undergraduate mechatronics course at Oklahoma State University, develop changes to improve the current course and keep up with current developments in both hardware and software as well as skill sets of current undergraduates. The suggested changes include the migration from programming in C to the use of LabVIEW. Five projects were designed to introduce students to the software and important mechatronics concepts. These projects are designed to introduce students step by step to LabVIEW and provide them along with the lecture with a good foundation in mechatronics.;The use of LabVIEW had many advantages over the current course such as less time spent on teaching programming skills and introducing students to the more intuitive environment of a graphical programming language.