Academic synergy through integrated mechatronic projects

This Innovative to Practice Work in Progress paper presents an approach to obtain synergy by implementing an integrated mechatronic project within a postgraduate program. Mechatronics has been a reference for synergetic integration of technology. However, synergy is obtained not only from technical issues, but through professional skills. Nevertheless, traditional education and industry standards focus only on the technical side. The study case is performed within the program Integrated Design of Technical Systems by implementing strategies such as integrated scheduling, integrated assessment and project proposal with application fields such as agriculture, robotics, health and mobility. This approach does not require additional credits for a project course, since the project lies underneath the courses. It has led to an increase of enrollment of students, which is significant during times when less engineers opt for further technical education.