Mechatronics and systems instruction across graduate, undergraduate, and research applications using rapidly reconfigurable hardware

A challenge with the development of any new laboratory is the cost-effective use of hardware resources. This work discusses the development of a reconfigurable data-acquisition architecture across three different application areas in university mechatronics and control systems instruction setting: undergraduate education, graduate education, and graduate-level research. An analysis is offered of the different operational and educational requirements across these different levels of instruction. In many cases, these educational tiers present non-complementary requirements including different expectations on ease of use, durability, compatibility, software complexity, and performance. This work presents a laboratory development strategy that assists in balancing research and teaching while simultaneously fostering new activity in both areas.