A development process for mechatronic products: Integrating software engineering and product engineering

Mechatronic products integrate Electrical, Software and Mechanical Engineering, allowing new possibilities in product development. This paper proposes a unified process to guide the development of mechatronic products which includes the Rational Unified Process with some established methods and techniques from Electrical and Mechanical engineering. The approach focuses on the extensive exploration of multidisciplinary knowledge to develop an integrated solution. Time constraints and reliability issues are addressed. To illustrate the approach a simple case study is presented.