Mechatronics 17 (2007) 457–461

Technical note

A FPGA-based rapid prototyping approach for teaching

of Mechatronics Engineering
K.C. Aw *, S.Q. Xie, E. Haemmerle
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Received 7 October 2005; accepted 11 May 2007

Abstract

The degree of Mechatronics Engineering was first introduced in 2002 at the University of Auckland by the Department of Mechanical
Engineering. Teaching such a degree requires an integrated approach to topics such as applied mechatronics, mechanical design, control
and software engineering. The use of field programmable gate array (FPGA) with associated software enables students to learn various
digital design techniques, simulate and quickly implement them into the design of mechatronics systems. This paper presents a FPGA-
based rapid prototyping platform for teaching applied electronics, hardware description languages and motor control concepts. The plat-
form is based on Altera’s University Program UP2 Development Kit. The approach used in the application of FPGA is to accurately
reflect current practice in industry rather than the more traditional TTL or CMOS chips and breadboard based approach to quickly
prototype a digital system.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Rapid prototyping; FPGA; Mechatronics design

1. Introduction neer in these companies is diversifying and becoming multi-

1.1. Overview
The definition of mechatronics has evolved since the ori-
ginal definition by the Yasakawa Electric Company [1].
Since then, the study of mechatronics has been compart-
mentalized into several areas such as system modelling,
sensors and actuators, signals and systems, computers
and logic system, software and data acquisition [2].
The accelerated growth of electronics and computers has
hampered the job prospect of traditional Mechanical Engi-
neering graduates. Sensors, micro-chips and actuators are
commonly found in modern products. Even the auto indus-
try which is traditionally a Mechanical Engineering domain
is putting micro-chips in modern vehicles, and plans to
increase the number of micro-chips as new technologies
are being introduced [3]. Increasingly, the role of the engi-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: k.aw@auckland.ac.nz (K.C. Aw).
disciplinary in nature. The drastic growth of electronics
requires changes to the present education curriculum in
engineering schools [4]. Mechatronics, with its multi-disci-
plinary approach to the design and development of engi-
neering solutions, provides an important direction to
follow in teaching and research. Hence, the teaching of
such a multi-disciplinary degree has become necessary for
successful engineers.
Universities around the world have responded with the
introduction of new degrees in Mechatronics or Electrome-
chanical Engineering arises. It is widely agreed that mech-
atronics is an interdisciplinary field, in which traditional
disciplines of information technology, mechanical and elec-
tronics systems are taught together [5].
At the University of Auckland (UoA), mechatronics is
defined as a blend of mechanical, electronic and computer
system engineering. It is an interdisciplinary approach with
the aim of being able to integrate knowledge of various dis-
ciplines when designing products and processes. Mecha-
tronics engineers are expected to use software to model

0957-4158/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2007.05.001
458 K.C. Aw et al. / Mechatronics 17 (2007) 457–461
and analyze products before they build them, select sensors
and actuators, write control software and design mechani-
cal components, whilst being part of and coordinating
design teams from different engineering disciplines.
1.2. Mechatronics at the University of Auckland
The Department of Mechanical Engineering at UoA has
recently introduced the Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in
Mechatronics Engineering and the first students graduated
at the end of 2004. The aim is to bridge the technology gap
between Mechanical and Electronics Engineering gradu-
ates. It has been widely acknowledged that all mechanical
engineers must be mechatronics engineers regardless of
their specialization [6]. The initial curriculum was devel-
oped in such a way that 50% of the courses taken by Mech-
atronics students were identical to Mechanical
Engineering. The remaining 50% are specialization courses
related to mechatronics such as, digital electronics, ana-
logue electronics, microprocessor and microcontroller,
software engineering, industrial automation and mecha-
tronics design. (This has changed in 2006 resulting in an
even greater electronics and software proportion.) It is
important that the curriculum is designed in such a manner
that it allows students to gain experience in handling low-
level components [7]. At UoA, the curriculum is designed
to allow students to obtain knowledge and skills from com-
partmentalized subjects in year 2 and year 3 with year 1
being identical for all engineering students. At year 4, stu-
dents are allowed to select different elective subjects. How-
ever, mechatronics design is a compulsory subject at year 4.
Mechatronics design is important as it allows students to
collectively apply what they have learned in previous years.
There are few lectures for this subject. It consists of a
range of projects that demonstrate the application and inte-
gration of knowledge taught in earlier years to create prac-
tical intelligent products or systems. The broad based
approach making use of design-and-build projects encour-
ages creativity and excitement about the subject [8,9]. It
stretches over two semesters and consists of four projects
with each running approximately 6 weeks. An average of
3 h laboratory time is allocated in each week for students
to access equipment and hardware. Each project provides
the opportunity to use different types of control systems
such as microcontrollers, microprocessors, field program-
mable gate arrays (FPGA) and desktop computers. The
aim is to provide the students with a wide variety of expe-
riences in implementing different systems in an attempt to
increase their competitiveness in the tight job market when
they graduate. At the end of each project, each student has
to write a formal report detailing their design and demon-
strate the project to the instructor.
In this paper, we will discuss the first project in mecha-
tronics design that utilizes Altera University Program UP2
Development Kit. This project will require Mechatronics
students to apply prior learned knowledge of electrome-
chanical actuators, electronic circuit design, logical opera-
tions, and hardware description language (Verilog). It is
important to be aware that FPGA is by no means a
replacement of other existing systems such as microproces-
sor, microcontroller or computer but to complement their
skills sets. The approach used in the application of FPGA
is to accurately reflect current practice in industry rather
than the more traditional breadboard based approach
[10]. Rather than being limited to a few TTL or CMOS
chips that will fit on a small breadboard, designs containing
tens of thousands of gates are possible. This enables rapid
prototyping of a digital system.
2. Altera’s University Program UP2 Development Kit
The University Program UP2 Development Kit was
developed to meet the needs of universities teaching digital
logic design with software development tools and FPGA.
The development kit provides all of the necessary tools
for creating and implementing digital logic designs, and
includes the following components:
(i) MAXPLUSÒ II university development software that
offers a full spectrum of logic design capabilities: a
variety of design entry methods for hierarchical
designs, logic synthesis, timing-driven compilation,
partitioning, functional and timing simulation, linked
multi-device simulation, timing analysis, automatic
error location, and device programming and verifica-
tion [11].
(ii) UP2 Education Board contains two devices:
a. An EPF10K70 device in a 240-pin power quad flat
pack (RQFP) package.
b. An EPM7128 device in a 84-pin plastic J-lead chip
carrier (PLCC) package.
During introductory lectures, students were made aware
that there are two main competing companies producing
FPGAs: Xilinx and Altera. They were also briefly intro-
duced to several types of FPGA architectures and associ-
ated development boards provided by both companies
such as Xilinx’s Spartan-3E and Altera’s UP3 Cyclone.
The Altera’s UP2 and Xilinx Spartan-3E Development
Boards are entry level boards. However, the UP2 Develop-
ment Board is adopted here due to existing availability and
it contains two architecturally simple devices (i.e.
EPF10K70 and EPM7128) that can easily be introduced
to undergraduates from Mechanical Engineering. How-
ever, the devices on the UP2 Development Board lack
resources such as limited logic elements and will impede
the development of large and complex systems for graduate
projects. Furthermore MAXPLUS II lacks features offered
by Altera’s newer Quartus II software. (However, this will
soon change with the planned acquisition of the recently
introduced DE-2 Educational Development Kit by Altera
that contains a powerful CycloneÒ II FPGA with rich
input/output (I/O) support, capable of supporting both
undergraduate courses and graduate projects.)
 K.C. Aw et al. / Mechatronics 17 (2007) 457–461
The reasons for choosing an FPGA design are:
(i) To provide students with tools to achieve rapid pro-
totyping of digital systems that is essential in the cur-
rent electronic industry reflecting current industry
practice.
(ii) To provide an environment for students to design
and implement digital logic circuits such as truth
tables, excitation tables, state diagrams, Karnaugh
map and Boolean equations into actual real life
applications.
(iii) To use a hardware description language such as Ver-
ilog HDL to describe the behaviour of a digital sys-
tem, synthesis and actual hardware implementation
as an alternative design platform.
(iv) To provide students with the opportunity to be
exposed to this alternative technology instead of tra-
ditional use of discrete logic devices or microproces-
sor to implement digital control.
The UP2 Education Board also contains on-board I/O
devices such as switches, light emitting diodes and 7-seg-
ment displays, making the board sufficient to teach basic
introductory undergraduate courses [12]. In addition, there
are expansion header pins that allow interfacing with exter-
nal circuits. The board also carries an oscillator running at
25.175 MHz that can be used to clock the devices.
A Byte Blaster II parallel port cable is required to con-
nect the board to the computer that runs the MAXPLUS II
software. This cable sends programming or configuration
data between the MAXPLUS II software and the FPGA
on the UP2 Education Boards.
3. Stepper motor control project
In order to complete the project in 6 weeks or less (a
total of 18 h or less), a moderately complex system will
be implemented. This project requires students to apply
knowledge and skills previously acquired such as:
(i) Digital logic design – finite state machine.
(ii) Hardware description languages – i.e. Verilog HDL
or VHDL.
(iii) Hierarchical design technique in the implementation
using FPGA.
(iv) Electronics circuit design – i.e. interface and drive
circuit.
(v) Motors and actuators – i.e. stepper motor.
Each student is expected to use the FPGA on the UP2
board as the main component to generate the appropriate
waveforms to a driver circuit to turn the stepper motor.
On-board switches and pushbuttons on the UP2 board will
be used as command input to the FPGA to determine the
number of turning steps and to start/stop the stepper
motor respectively. The 7-segment display will be used
to display the number of turning steps determined by
459
the input switches to turn the stepper motor. Students
are required to only use standard discrete components
available in the laboratory such as transistors, diodes,
opto-isolators and resistors to build the interface and dri-
ver circuit.
The implementation in the FPGA is expected to be hier-
archical with Verilog hardware description language
(HDL) used to build the different component logic blocks.
Different component logic blocks will together create larger
system blocks which will in turn be interconnected to real-
ize the finite state machines of the system. Students are also
expected to calculate the required biasing condition to the
constructed interface and driver circuit, providing opportu-
nity to apply their prior electronic knowledge.
This project, which is the first in a series of projects in
mechatronics design, will subsequently be expanded. In
subsequent projects, students are required to use a sensor
and analogue-to-digital converter for determining the posi-
tion, speed and acceleration of the stepper motor with data
acquisition using computers, etc. This allows students to
build a larger system progressively over the semester.
3.1. System overview
Four main blocks are used, namely the ‘‘control-
ler_block’’, ‘‘slow_clock block’’, ‘‘LED_display block’’
and the ‘‘step_output block’’ as shown in Fig. 1. The ‘‘con-
trol block’’ takes the inputs from 8 switches and a push-
button. The 8 switches are used to input the amount of
turning steps (1 step is 1.8°); a positive 8-bit binary repre-
sents a clock-wise rotation and a negative 8-bit binary rep-
resents a counter clock-wise rotation. The push-button will
start the stepper motor turning according to the input by
the 8 switches. The ‘‘slow_clock block’’ is a frequency divi-
der that reduces the high clock frequency provided by the
crystal to a lower frequency. The ‘‘step_output block’’ pro-
vides the proper step sequences driving the stepper motor.
Finally, the ‘‘LED_display block’’ controls two 7-segment-
display indicating the amount of steps provided by the 8
switches.
LED
display
8 block 8 7-segment
display
8 switches
8
Controller
block
Push-button
Stepper motor
interface
circuit
Slow clock Step output
From on-board block block
4
oscillator
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the project.
460 K.C. Aw et al. / Mechatronics 17 (2007) 457–461

3.2. Logic block design

0000
X,0 X,1
Each main logic block is constructed from several com- XXXX
ponent blocks. For example, the ‘‘controller_block’’ of
0,1
Fig. 1 is constructed from four component logic blocks;
namely ‘‘flex_holding block’’, ‘‘go_holder block’’, ‘‘step_
counter block’’ and ‘‘count_flag block’’. Each component 1001
1,1
1100
Direction, start/stop
logic block is constructed from even smaller component
blocks. This demonstrates the hierarchical design technique 0,1 1,1 1,1 0,1
being employed in this project where each component logic
block can be reused. Each component logic block can be
1,1
implemented in MAXPLUS II using either a hardware 0011 0110
description language (HDL) such as Verilog HDL or
graphical logic schematic (GLS). The four component logic
Four outputs to 0,1 X – don’t care
blocks implemented in MAXPLUS II were interconnected the stepper
to construct the larger ‘‘controller_block’’ are shown in
Fig. 2. Fig. 3. The state diagram of the step_output block based on Moore
model.
The control of a stepper motor can be implemented
using a finite state machine represented by a state diagram.
A state diagram as shown in Fig. 3, representing the four II cable. Once the device has been configured, it is expected
control phases of a stepper motor can be used to define to perform accordingly as designed.
the operation of the ‘‘step_output block’’. The finite state
machine can be designed and implemented via GLS or 3.3. Interface and drive circuit
HDL entry. Verilog HDL entry is easier to implement than
GLS as it is in text form and is easier to design and modify In order for the FPGA to control and drive the stepper
for a large digital system. Students not familiar with HDL motor, an interface and drive circuit using electronic com-
can still use GLS entry. However, using GLS entry, the stu- ponents are required. At this stage, the student has to apply
dents will have to use the graphical tools in the MAXPLUS the basic electronic circuit knowledge to construct and
II to construct the logic schematic of the finite state implement the circuit on a breadboard. Each student was
machine making it tedious for large logic systems. only given access to a limited range of discrete components
The hierarchical design technique used allows compo- such as transistors, diodes, resistors, etc that are available
nent blocks to be reused and hence results in a shorter in the laboratory to construct the interface and drive cir-
design cycle. This is an important technique as it provides cuit. In this particular project, the interface and drive cir-
students with a design concept which will be useful when cuit built is shown in Fig. 4.
involved in larger design projects in the future. The com- In this example, the application of basic circuit analysis
pleted design will then be compiled and simulated to verify is required to determine the values R1 and R2 to ensure
its behaviour and operation. The final design will then be proper switching and driving the stepper motor. A picture
converted into a SRAM Object File (SOF) that will be of the completed hardware is shown in Fig. 5. It consists of
downloaded to configure the FPGA via the Byte Blaster a UP2 board, interface and drive circuit and finally the
stepper motor itself.

VCC1 VCC2
+5V
+12V

R1 R2 Com

IN4004

FPGA
10K70
Stepper
BD139 motor
Opto-isolator, ISQ 74

Fig. 4. Stepper motor interface and drive circuit for one phase (four
Fig. 2. The component logic blocks in the ‘‘controller_block’’. duplicates are required for the stepper motor).
 K.C. Aw et al. / Mechatronics 17 (2007) 457–461
Fig. 5. A complete hardware of the project.
4. Discussion and conclusion
This paper presents a FPGA-based rapid prototyping
platform as part of teaching mechatronics design of Mech-
atronics Engineering at the University of Auckland. The
platform is based on Altera’s University Program UP2
Development Kit. FPGA offers an alternative method to
quickly prototype a large digital system without the need
of using the traditional TTL or CMOS chips on a bread-
board. However, students have to be informed that FPGA
has its weaknesses especially when implementing a system
requiring large and fast computational tasks. In this case
a microprocessor or microcontroller will be more suitable.
Nevertheless, it offers an alternative for embedded digi-
tal control which has traditionally been either microproces-
sor or microcontroller based. This FPGA project also
demonstrates that mechatronics students could learn
hardware description language, digital design, as well as
knowledge of integration between electronics and electro-
mechanical systems. It has been proven to be a very flexible
tool for the teaching of mechatronics design. FPGA-based
projects such as the control of temperature chamber,
inverted pendulum, and smart mobile robot have been
planned for coming years.
In subsequent projects (project number 2–4), students
will be further exposed by expanding this project with the
use of microprocessor, microcontroller and/or desktop
computer, hence widening their experience and ultimately
enhance their capabilities when facing the tough job mar-
ket upon graduation.
Since Mechatronics Engineering at UoA is new, limited
data on student course feedback is available. The yearly
461
student course feedback for the mechatronics design course
is encouraging with an improving approval rate from an
initial 64.2% in 2004 to 86.5% in 2006.
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