Control Engineering Practice 12 (2004) 1341

Preface
Special section on mechatronic systems
The special section on Mechatronic Systems includes
10 papers, which were among 141 invited and con-
tributed papers presented at the 2nd IFAC Conference
on Mechatronic Systems held on December 911, 2002
at the University of California, Berkeley. Invitation for
inclusion in this section was extended to 13 papers based
on the inputs from the members of the international
program committee and sessions chairs; one invitation
was declined and two papers were judged to be not
suitable for the journal after review.
The rst paper in this section, Automotive Mecha-
tronics by Dr. P. Sch. oner, was the opening plenary talk
at the Conference. It presents the motivation, technical
challenges and future of mechatronics along with
representative mechatronic solutions in the automotive
industry. The automotive/ground vehicle applications
were a strong part of the Conference; a paper on semi-
active suspension by Fischer et al. and another on
hydraulic clutch control by Monatanari et al. represent
the area of automotive applications. Assessment of
Active Stability Control Strategies for a High Speed
Bogies by Pearson et al. introduces how control
theoretic methodologies have been applied to the area
of rail transportation in the context of mechatronics. A
paper by Lee and Tsao on material testing systems
presents how advanced control methodologies such as
repetitive control and back-stepping may enhance the
performance of modern mechanical systems. The Hard
Disk Drives (HDD) industry strives to achieve higher
storage densities at a reduced cost, and there are
vigorous research activities in the mechatronics com-
munity to respond to this need. A paper by Marcassa
and Oboe on HDD presents such an activity. Modeling
a 5-DOF Haptic Interface for Isotropic Force Control
by Lee et al. presents a design of new haptic interfaces; it
is also an excellent example of applying the multi-
variable control theory to modeling and controller
design of multi-degree of freedom mechatronic systems.
The conference program included sessions on actuators
and mechatronic components. The following two papers
belong to this category. A paper by Lee and Sosseh
presents characterization of a spherical motor, a unique
new mechatronic component. A paper by Garagic and
Srinivassan presents friction compensation for a strut by
applying adaptive control. Finally, a paper by Hintz
et al. presents an identication method for physical
parameters and nonlinear characteristics of mechanical
systems with a known structure. These 10 papers are
collectively an excellent summary of how control
methodologies help design and operation of mechatro-
nic systems.
The IFAC Technical Committee on Mechatronic
Systems (MIS) sponsored the Berkeley mechatronic
conference. The Committee was established recently in
response to the ever growing importance of mechatro-
nics in various industries such as automotive, biomedi-
cal, information storage devices and aerospace.
Industrial products are increasingly sophisticated and
complex, and industry must respond to the needs of
market and society with high-quality products in a
timely manner. Mechatronic approaches pursue the
synergy achieved through the integration of mechanical,
electrical, and information technologies in the design,
manufacture and operation of industrial products and
processes; synergies may be in terms of performance,
physical dimension, cost, power efciency, time for
development, dealing with complexity, and so on.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the
members of the International Program Committee for
soliciting, reviewing and compiling papers to form an
exciting technical program at the conference. For other
papers presented at the conference, please refer to the
Proceedings published by Elsevier.
Masayoshi Tomizuka (Guest Editor)
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of California, Berkeley,
CA 94720, USA
E-mail address: tomizuka@me.berkeley.edu
ARTICLE IN PRESS
0967-0661/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.conengprac.2004.05.006