Rapid prototyping in microsystems development

Microsystems technology is a rapidly growing field, but engineering tools for microsystems do not appear as fast as the technology is moving. In this paper, we show that methods and tools developed for the information processing units in macro systems, e.g. mechatronic systems, can be reused in microsystems development. The methods and tools we present cover the requirements analysis phase of the product life-cycle. Rapid prototyping is used to validate the user's requirements of the information processing units.