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Mechatronics combines mechanical, electrical, electronic and software engineering in the design, development and control of diverse systems used in a range of industries including manufacturing, medicine and the service industries.
This means that the product or production process involves a mechanical structure containing actuators (e.g motors to make things move), a microprocessor to control the overall operation of the system, sensors to allow the microprocessor to monitor the state of the system and software to connect all the parts together
Research focus on the application of these principles to develop modular, flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems that can sense, think and act.
Projects
Smart Factory
Research focussed on the SmartFactory concept through which affordable automation is sought to assist small, medium and micro-enterprises. The CSIR developed a system that operates in a “plug-n-play" fashion. Any configuration change is handled automatically, installation of new sensors and actuators is easily managed by a minimally trained person, and reporting data is easily accessible from easy to use interfaces. Factory trial installations is underway and this technology is ready to be licensed to interested parties.
Reconfigurable Manufacturing System
Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) are a compromise between the high flexibility of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) and the dedicated manufacturing systems that are designed for mass-production.
Development of suitable RMS for the South African manufacturing industry will result in a value-added competitive advantage of that industry. RMS can contain an economic mix of flexible and dedicated equipment, as well as in-process reconfigurable inspection-machines and reconfigurable production-machines whose functionality and productivity can be readily changed when needed.
Some of the characteristic of RMS are the following: modularity, integrability, customized flexibility, scalability and diagnosability. Because the equipment and the manufacturing system for an RMS will be reconfigured several times, it is important that the manufacturing system have shorter ramp-up time.
KUeFA
As part of licensing of the PBMR nuclear demonstration plant in South Africa, the nuclear fuel has to be tested in emergency conditions. An instrument known as the KUeFA is used to test the fuel. This project involved the basic design of the KUeFA for South African hot cell conditions.
Robotics
The theory of autonomous systems is important in the development of advanced robotics techniques, as it includes the development of new algorithms and artificial intelligence. Areas of interest to this group are sensor fusion, distributed sensor fusion, Kalman filter, Bayesian Theory, estimation and navigation. These areas enable the development of autonomous mobile robotic platforms in the following projects:
- Rotary Autonomous Aerial Vehicle for inspection of large assets.
- Advanced Service Robots to improve efficiencies in factories or offices
- Underwater Autonomous System for inspection of underwater assets and monitoring
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