Mechatronics: Principles and Applications

Motor control is one of those wonderful digital/analog topics that has become more important in embedded development with the increase in microcontrollers targeted at this space as well as a competitive demand for more sophisticated solutions. Onwubolu’ Mechatronics: Principles and Applications does an excellent job of presenting the basics as well as advanced topics in this area. Anyone working in this area should have the book on their shelf.

The author starts out with a number of introduction chapters covering topics such as analog and digital circuits capping it off with a discussion of Microchip’s PIC16F84 microcontroller. The chapters move on to data acquisition and sensors. Things get interesting with an extensive discussion of actuators and interfacing to microcontrollers.

The book covers control theory and more advanced control interfaces. An entire chapter is dedicated to robotics. There is a short chapter on circuit board manufacture and another on reliability.

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