Development of Behavioural Modules for Mechatronic Product Families using the 3D Design Structure Matrix Approach

Abstract

Increased competition in the global market has forced companies to diversify their product ranges to meet the customers’ changing needs and adopt product development strategies for “mass customization”, which requires designing modular products. Product modularity is achieved via platform-based systems, in which various combinations of different modules are assembled within a common platform. In the literature, there is a considerable amount of research on modularity for mechanical products. Yet, research on modularity of smart systems, such as mechatronic products, is quite limited. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop fundamental behavioural modules to facilitate the systematic design of platform-based mechatronic product families for mass customization. Being developed using the state-event model of mechatronic systems at an early design stage, these modules enable a behavioural adaptation of smart systems through a systematic formal structure. In this study, fundamental mechatronic behaviour modules are developed using a modified form of Design Structure Matrix (DSM) existing in the literature. DSM is adopted to mechatronic systems as a 3D matrix, which includes sensorial, motoric and cognitive behaviours. Symbolic representations of mechatronic behaviour modules are generated and used for describing robot tasks. The mechatronic behaviour modules developed in this study are implemented on a demonstrative task-based robot family model composed of guide robots for museums and shopping malls, a guard robot, a house-cleaning robot and companion robots for children, the elderly and pets.