Mechatronics

Mechatronics is now part of the new Faculty of Engineering

Overview

The Mechatronics Group was initially established at the University of Waikato in the early 1990’s. Many of the projects and links to theses contained in this web site were developed at Waikato and ported to Victoria University where development is continuing and accelerating.

Our Group has developed a fleet of five (soon to be six) mobile robots capable of autonomous operation over a variety of different terrains. There is MARVIN for indoor operation on smooth surfaces, a pair of co-operating robots, Itchy and Scratchy for regular outdoor terrain, an underwater remote operating vehicle, a self-laying track robot for rough outdoor terrain and we are currently developing a robot for search and rescue applications. Our research focus is to provide these robots with the ability to operate independently of human intervention, and consequently artificial intelligence and robotic learning are of particular interest to us.

The Mechatronics Group here is developing strong collaborations with the Artificial Intelligence Group from the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, and the Industrial Design Group from the School of Design.

We also collaborate with a number of industries including Robotechnology and Perreaux Industries and Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), particularly Industrial Research Limited where we have helped develop their meat-cutting robot and are currently working with them on the FPGA implementation of a communication system utilising Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).

Future directions for the Group include expanding our knowledge of robotic artificial intelligence to solve specific problems and the collaboration with the Universities of Auckland, Waikato, and Canterbury together with the Manukau Institute of Techonology in the development of the search and rescue robot. In the near future, we also expect to move into the areas of rehabilitation and sports mechatronics.