leaving something on the table” Branding mechatronics with the Dutch approach

BRANDING MECHATRONICS WITH THE DUTCH APPROACH

The Netherlands has long worked to put its stamp on mechatronics design and development. One way the country maintains its ‘Dutch approach’ is through trainings to transfer the knowledge. But how does that differ from other regions in the world? Vinicius Licks, professor of mechatronics at Brazil’s Insper College, shares what he observed attending Dutch mechatronics training.

Collin Arocho

With a rich history of technical innovation embedded in its culture, the Netherlands has long been at the cutting edge of technology and engineering.  is advanced position stems, in part, from the robust relationship between industry leaders and the technical universities. However, another instrument the Dutch use to maintain a healthy high-tech ecosystem is through the utilization of courses and trainings to both transfer and preserve the knowledge. Now, as the Netherlands’ high-tech industry continues to hold its in uence on global markets and supply chains, it should come as no surprise that the country’s expertise and skills within the realm are also of great international appeal.

Just ask Vinicius Licks, professor and associate dean of the mechatronics program at Insper College in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2018, Licks made his  rst of three long treks from South America straight to the Netherlands. He didn’t travel across the globe to enjoy a vacation; he came to get a feel for the Dutch high-tech environment, speci cally through the mechatronics training cluster provided by High Tech Institute. “Training is one of the best ways to get in touch with new ideas and often to get new perspectives on old ideas,” says Licks. “It’s a great opportunity to communicate with your peers, exchange best practices and learn how to push the state-of-theart in the  eld.”

Eye opening

Of course, coming from a setting in higher education, Licks was more accustomed to attending conferences, rather than technical training programs. “I work for an academic institution, so usually we’re the trainers, not the trainees,” he jokes. “But this was truly an eye-opening experience for me.” According to Licks, his  rst course, the “Motion control tuning” training, o ered him a vastly di erent perspective on teaching and learning feedback control. “Most schools that I’m familiar with emphasize system identi cation in the sense that you must use it  rst to get a plant model to work with in your tuning e orts.  e approach that I was exposed to during

the training, however, was more experimentalist. The focus was less on the ‘modeling from first principles’ part and more on using frequency response estimates to tune the controller iteratively. While this approach to teaching feedback control was new to me, it was clear that for the control engineers in the Dutch mechatronics cluster, this was common sense.”

Enthusiastic after completing his first course, Licks made the long journey across the Atlantic twice more in 2019, specifically for two more courses in the Mechatronics Academy’s training curriculum: “Advanced motion control” and “Experimental techniques in mechatronics.” “I was so impressed with the courses that I attended, they really helped me sharpen my skills and understanding of the Dutch cultural approach to mechatronics, both practical and theoretical,” highlights Licks. “The instructors were very knowledgeable and all of them professionally connected due to working or studying together in the past. That makes a big difference in terms of continuity and coherence of the content they’re delivering – all with the same vocabulary and experimental references.”

“The curricula are very meaningful and relevant. They’re completely designed for someone who wants to have a complete view of the field of mechatronics design. The sequence of courses is built in such a way that some frameworks will be dealt with continuously, but from different perspectives and with increasing complexity. This is very rewarding because you feel that someone has put in time and effort to really think about what’s included in every one of the courses,” depicts Licks. “It’s most likely, of course, that this is the work of many people and the outcome of several iterations of offering the same courses along the years, but also of caring to ‘close the loop’ with student feedback.”

How were these trainings different from others that you’ve attended elsewhere?

“These trainings, in particular, have given me a different perspective about how feedback control theory can be taught and learned, as well as the importance of creating common project frameworks before

Automation and Control Lab at Insper College in São Paulo, Brazil.

Credit: Insper

sharing these frameworks with all your teams and making sure that every new team member will be wellversed in those frameworks as soon as possible. Coming from outside the Dutch cluster, it’s very interesting to realize how much shared knowledge there is in this industry in the Netherlands. People have been indoctrinated, in a positive way, into using the same conceptual tools and vocabularies, which makes the region much more productive. It’s amazing to see all these people getting so excited to look at an experimental Nyquist plot,” laughs Licks, “I’ve never seen such a fervent devotion to the frequency response function.”

Pragmatic

Another specific difference that Licks sees in the Dutch courses, versus others, is the style and format in which the training is presented. He says, of the several previous trainings he’s attended, they almost always fall in one of two categories: extremely theoretical or purely empirical. “Instructors coming from academia tend to be more prone to the theory, while typically, the industrial side is drawn the other way. What I experienced in the Netherlands was a methodology that mixed both worlds in such a way that theory was always informed by experimentation. You see that theory actually works in practice and you have a robust understanding of why this works because of the theoretical background. It’s this approach to teaching and learning that reflects much of the pragmatism embedded in the ‘Dutch way’ of doing mechatronics design.”

Do you have any plans to return for a fourth training course?

“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m looking forward to attending the ‘Advanced feedforward and learning control’ training. But I still have to convince the organizers to include additional sessions closer to the summer when the weather in the Netherlands is way more attractive!”

Paul van Gerven is an editor at Bits&Chips.

Dillydallying

Iconcluded my opening editorial two Bits&Chips issues ago with an encouragement for public authorities to (among other things) start throwing money at green technology. I must have been in a bit of a philosophical mood the day I found the paper magazine with said article on my desk, because when I re-read my own work (yes, I am that vain), it occurred to me that it’s kind of funny that to solve the global warming crisis, we’re actually betting on the very thing that set it in motion in the first place.

The constantly expanding nature of technology renders this line of reasoning flawed, obviously, but it does expose a human instinct in modern times: that technology will come to the rescue. It’s not hard to see how such a belief has come to be. Looking back at how science and technology have transformed society and the world over the centuries, there’s something inevitable and unstoppable about them. Technological progress is a given so ingrained that it’s never challenged. So why would it fail us now, battling climate change?

Ironically, however, so far our faith in technological progress has only worked to make matters worse. As long as global warming has been on the agenda, political leaders have simply been putting off taking action, believing technology will pick up the slack eventually. Two decades of reports, summits and agreements have failed to produce results, while the problem grew ever larger. As climate researchers recently outlined in Nature, the result of this dillydallying in the past decade is that the world now must do four times the work, or do the same amount in one third of the time.

Of course, there have always been people who didn’t believe in the technological magic bullet. Though some consider things like solar panels and wind farms useful additions, many environmentalists point to human behavior as the primary problem. They argue that global warming is about ever-expanding demands of humankind on a planet with finite re

Marry technological with social innovation

sources, which can only be halted by cutting consumption. It’s clear why most politicians haven’t embraced this school of thought. People generally don’t like to give up their comforts or sacrifice economic growth.

The tech believers and the consumption cutters do have something in common. The former subscribe to hypothetical solutions in the future, the latter turn to lifestyle changes whose biggest effect is to make them feel better about themselves. Effectively, both groups don’t take any meaningful action. As TS Elliot said, humankind cannot bear very much reality.

So, that’s it then? Everyone sticks theirs heads in the sand and we’re getting nowhere? Well, yes and no. If you ask me, disruptive climate change is already inevitable. Whatever clever technology we’ll come up with or whatever systemic consumption-cutting measures we (somehow) manage to implement, they’ll only serve to prevent worse. But doing something still trumps doing nothing.

If the corona outbreak has done any good, it may be that it has shown us that technology alone cannot necessarily solve all problems. The best way forward, therefore, might be to merge the tech and behaviororiented approaches: marry technological with social innovation. Forget politicians and their endless policy deliberations, always waiting for the slowest ones to catch up. Let science and society experiment bottom-up with whatever might help. Have scientists and society help each other, be it to make the most of green technology we already have or to find better ways to persuade the general public to adopt a lower-emission lifestyle. Keep what works, discard what fails. Piecemeal techno-socio engineering we might call it.

Trends in software development

Technologies for the IoT

Bits&Chips 4 | 4 September 2020

High-tech systems are increasingly dependent on software development for their quality, reliability, security and commercial success. What are the do’s and don’ts? What are the state-of-the-art methods and tools? This issue shares findings from the field.

Bits&Chips 5 | 2 October 2020

From consumer devices to vehicles and machines: these days everything’s plugged into the Internet. The IoT is playing an increasingly central role in our daily lives. This issue dives into the current state of the technologies that make it possible to connect everything to everything else.

Interested in contributing? nieke@techwatch.nl Interested in advertising? sales@techwatch.nl

About Bits&Chips

Bits&Chips is an independent news magazine for people who work to make smart products and machines. Bits&Chips is a publication of Techwatch BV in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Transistorweg 7H – 6534 AT Nijmegen tel +31 24 3503532 info@techwatch.nl techwatch.nl

Editorial

Nieke Roos – editor-in-chief tel +31 24 3503534 – nieke@techwatch.nl René Raaijmakers – editor tel +31 24 3503065 – rene@techwatch.nl Paul van Gerven – editor tel +31 24 3505028 – paul@techwatch.nl Collin Arocho – editor tel +31 24 3503533 – collin@techwatch.nl Jessica Vermeer – editor tel +31 24 3503534 – jessica@techwatch.nl Antoinette Brugman – editor tel +31 24 3503534 – antoinette@techwatch.nl Alexander Pil – editor tel +31 24 3504580 – alexander@techwatch.nl

Design

Justin López – graphic designer and illustrator tel +31 24 3503532 – justin@techwatch.nl

Sales, marketing and events

Kim Huijing – head of marketing and sales tel +31 24 3505195 – kim@techwatch.nl Marjolein Vissers – event manager tel +31 24 3505544 – marjolein@techwatch.nl Mariska van Hoeven – marketing and sales employee tel +31 24 3505544 – mariska@techwatch.nl Bo van Gaal – marketing and sales employee tel +31 24 3505195 – bo@techwatch.nl

Training courses

Linda van Hoeij – course manager tel +31 85 4013600 – linda.van.hoeij@hightechinstitute.nl Petry Jansen – marketing and sales employee tel +31 85 4013600 – petry.jansen@hightechinstitute.nl Heleen Wammes – employee

Administrative

Mathilde van Hulzen – finance tel +31 24 3503532 – invoices@techwatch.nl

Advisor

Maarten Verboom

External staff

Ilse de Boer, Femke Veldhuis

Contributing writers

Anton Duisterwinkel, Robert Howe, Ruud Kuepers, Cees Links, Hans Odenthal, Anton van Rossum, Arnold Schutter, Jori Winderickx

Publisher

René Raaijmakers tel +31 24 3503065 – rene@techwatch.nl ISSN 1879-6443

Publisher in Belgium

René Raaijmakers Biesheuvelstraat 1 2370 Arendonk, Belgium

Bits&Chips membership

Bits&Chips is free of charge for delivery to addresses in the Netherlands. You can also join as a premium member for 59 euros per year. That gets you (in addition to the magazine) substantial discounts on admission to Bits&Chips events held by Techwatch BV. For companies we have a business membership costing 159 euros per year. That includes two copies of Bits&Chips sent to the company address, plus two discount codes for every Bits&Chips event. To request a membership, please visit bits-chips.nl/subscribe or write to info@techwatch.nl. Back issues: write to info@techwatch.nl.

Delivery complaints

Did Bits&Chips arrive late or not at all? Other comments related to delivery? Please let us know by sending an email to info@techwatch.nl.

Advertising

Advertising rates are listed on our website (bits-chips.nl). If you would like to be informed of our upcoming themes and specials or to reserve advertising space, please contact our sales department, tel +31 24 3505195 – sales@techwatch.nl.

Publication dates

12 June, 4 September, 2 October, 20 November, 18 December

Copyright

All rights reserved. (c) 2020 Techwatch BV. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Disclaimer

Though the publisher and editors take the utmost care in creating, compiling and distributing the information in Bits&Chips, they cannot guarantee the information is correct or complete. The publisher and editors are in no way liable for damages that may arise in connection with the publication of information in Bits&Chips. Columnists and external staff write in a personal capacity. Reader responses fall outside the publisher’s and editors’ scope of responsibility. The publisher and editors are in no way liable for the content and signature of reader responses. The editors reserve the right to edit responses and to publish them in part or not at all.

Cover

Main photo: Lionix

bits-chips.nl

NEW DATE 23 SEPTEMBER 2020 VERKADEFABRIEK ’S-HERTOGENBOSCH

Keynote by Nicolas Lehment NXP

REGISTER NOW

Partners Silver sponsor

Sponsors