9354913 Devries Machine tools drove America's industrial preeminence in the world and were also a major driving force in mechanical enginering. Today, the United States is no longer as strong in machine tools as in the past. Mechatronics, as an engineering discipline, is the synergistic combination of mechanical enginering, electronics, control engineering, and computer science. The key element in mechatronics is the integration of these areas through the design process. We propose to use five NSF graduate research traineeships to foster the incorporation of mechatronic design principles into five important disciplinary research areas we have identified, and in which the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rensselaer has technical strength and expertise. Each of these technical areas is critical to machine tools and will add value, reliability and accuracy to new designs. As a result, we can offer our trainees a unique and broad research experience that can focus on the needs of the machine tools industry and machine tool users. ***
