COMPUTING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, VOL. 1, NO.1 JANUARY, 2013 www.researchpub.org/journal/cstij/cstij.html 6 Abstract—There has been an increasing interest of the research community in mechatronics over the last years since current practices are unable to address the complexity of today’s mechatronic systems. New methodologies are being proposed to address the challenges in the mechatronics domain. However, the communication gap, which exists between the various disciplines involved in mechatronic systems, makes the task of defining new methodologies very difficult. Moreover, there is no commonly used terminology, which makes the task of comparing or unifying these methodologies hard. In this paper, we refine our approach for synergistic integration in mechatronics and we attempt to establish a basic terminology and framework in this domain. It is claimed that main challenges in mechatronic system development including synergistic integration, size and complexity, reuse, as well as requirements handling and traceability, support for decision making, and maintaining consistency, are successfully addressed by the 3+1 SysML-view model approach. It is argued that the proper integration of Model Integrated Mechatronics (MIM) with SysML, on which the 3+1 SysML-view model is based, is a promising platform for a solid framework for mechatronic systems development. Index Terms—Mechatronics development process, SysML, Model Driven Engineering, requirements handling, consistency, 3+1 SysML-view model. I. INTRODUCTION echatronics is the engineering discipline concerned with the construction of systems composed of mechanics, electronics and software. The current practice in the development of these systems is characterized by a subsystem based approach by which integrated systems are built from technology homogeneous subsystems [1]. Moreover, current mechatronics engineering practices have a propensity to develop application-specific controllers, reducing reuse and increasing per-unit cost [2]. In this context, the traditional approach for the development of mechatronic systems, according to which their constituent parts, i.e., mechanics, electronics, and software, are developed independently, and then are integrated to compose the final system, does not address the requirements of the development process of today’s mechatronic systems. As an example, traditional automated manufacturing systems are not capable of responding rapidly to changes in demand and supply and they do not deliver the level Kleanthis Thramboulidis is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Patras, Patras, 26500 Greece (e-mail: thrambo@ece.upatras.gr). of agility that is highly imposed by current trends in the development of goods [3]. This is why manufacturers work to streamline and standardize system decomposition, in order to improve modules and subsystems reuse, furthering these benefits, and reduce per-unit costs [2]. The mechatronic systems developer should be able to evaluate different design alternatives as well as simultaneous changes in the three discipline parts, during the development process. Due to this there has been an increasing interest of the research community in mechatronics over the last years. New methodologies and tools are being proposed to address the current challenges in mechatronic system design. Among these challenges we discriminate synergistic integration, size & complexity, reuse, requirements handling and traceability, support for decision making, and maintaining consistency. Research groups have already presented various methodologies. However, questions are, even today, more than answers in this domain [4]. Moreover, there is a great gap in the terminology used in the various methodologies. The lack of a commonly used terminology by the various researchers in the area of mechatronics is evident. This is one of the factors that makes it hard to compare, and even more understand, the findings and contributions of the different methodologies proposed by various research groups. In [5] the importance of mechatronic domain models towards the digital plant engineering is discussed. The authors define the term “mechatronic information object” to refer to the collection of the information of the disciplines involved in the mechatronic system over its whole lifecycle. Authors use the mechatronic information object as a representative for the physical mechatronic system and the physical mechatronic component. In [6], authors describe a methodology that has been produced by aggregating existing methodologies in various domains. They use, a) the term “mechatronical unit” to refer to the real world entity, and b) the term “its describing information” to refer to the information that refers to the mechatronical unit derived during the early development phases. Authors in [7] attempt to define the basic concepts on which a mechatronic approach should be based. They use the term “mechatronical information object” (MIO) which they define as “an engineering artifact of information object type that combines the modeling of mechatronical units of a manufacturing system with its different characteristics like signals, electrical drawing, function blocks or devices in one object.” They consider MIO as the information representation of the mechatronical unit in the engineering process. Overcoming Mechatronic Design Challenges: the 3+1 SysML-view Model Kleanthis Thramboulidis, Member, IEEE M