Mechatronics projects at the University of Maribor

The paper presents three mechatronics project courses for the students of the first degree of Bologna program at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. Three courses, Project I, Project II and Project III, are assigned to the project work in the second and third study year. First course, Project I is some kind of introduction into the project work and the students are almost fully supervised by the mentors. The portion of autonomous work is then increasing trough other two courses and until diploma. In diploma the students typically continue the work on the project, but concentrate on specific details. By a careful choice of attractive, up-to-date real life problems, the project work provides the students with the practical skills and a broad knowledge from the mechanical engineering, motion control theory, electronics, drives, sensors, power electronics, automatic control and mechatronics design. Since quite complex projects are undertaken, many sub-tasks are available within one project, which allows the students to specialize in a field of their choice, by choosing the appropriate sub-task. The paper presents in more details a very popular this year's project `Design and realization of a hybrid drive'.