Mechatronics: Make Your Robot Projects Here

• Dan MacIsaac ^[1]
  1. [1] Column Editor Physics Department, SUNY-Buffalo State University, Buffalo
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 63, Nº. 2, 2025, págs. 142-142
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Mechatronics is the combination of mechanical, electrical, electronic, and software engineering—think tweaking downloaded code to install on a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or ESP32 that drives a small robot you built yourself—which is readily possible for undergraduate and gifted HS students given extensive freely downloadable hardware and software resources (usually from GitHub). Pre-Trump tariffs, Arduino Nanos and ESP32s (ESP32s have built-in Wi-Fi) are available under $5 from Ali Express, so an expensive kit is not required to start this hobby, and my students are particularly interested. There are lots of fun creatively oddball projects like this robot vision project that allows a goldfish in a wheel-mounted tank to explore the dry land world, or controllable toy model excavators, etc. The “How to Mechatronics” site is an excellent source of tutorials and projects, as is Make: Magazine and their YouTube channel