INTEGRATING ENGINEERING DISCIPLINES TO MEET THE REQUIREMENTS
OF THE NEXT CENTURY: THE CASE OF BIOMECHATRONICS
Erol İnelmen
Education Faculty, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey
ABSTRACT
We are all witnessing very important changes in our economical and social due to rapid
development of technology. Engineering education must come to terms with these changes
and new methods of learning are being now suggested. A more holistic approach to
knowledge acquisition and the integration of all engineering disciplines is seen as the new
approach to educating students to meet the requirements of the next century. Biomechatronics
–a new discipline that effectively integrates the knowledge from electronics, mechanics,
computer and medicine- is a typical example of how engineering is being now transformed in
theory and practice. This paper presents the experience gained while teaching students the
basic foundations of biomechatronics in a project centered approach to learning.
INTRODUCTION
A report prepared by the American Society for Engineering Education and published in the
year 1962 pinpoints the issues that are crucial in enhancing the quality of education. A
warning is made on how "all too often students view their curriculum as a sequence of
compartmentalized courses and fail to see how the material covered in the various courses is
interrelated". The author as an academician and practicioner of the engineering profession -for
more than three decades now- has been always puzzled by the fact that "an integrative
approach” for the engineering education is still very low in the agenda of many distinguished
institutions (Yetiş and İnelmen, 1997).
In search for a practical solution to the problem of integration in the engineering education,
the author reviewed the papers published by the former Dean of Engineering in the
Engineering Faculty of Boğaziçi University (Turkey). These publications suggest the means
for a more integrated curriculum using a "project centred learning" approach in education.
Paradoxically these recommendations have not been implemented as yet. To our knowledge
only Drexel University can be shown as a showcase, where integration is high in the agenda
of the administrations' strategic plans. In this university as well as in the Marmara University
in Turkey, attempts made on finding better ways to teach engineering are bearing fruits. As a
consequence an agreement to cooperate in making the curriculum more attractive is reached.
As the economical conditions in the world change, the graduates find themselves coping with
altogether foreign problems. While promoting the teaching the art of applying scientific tools
to problems that require the use of natural resources for the convenience of men, an education
system should develop the ability of self learning in the suggested "common fields of
activities" (Kaynak and Sabanoviç, 1994). Unfortunately the fact that textbooks are written
along disciplinary lines, the need to brake these barriers is blocked. The gradual removal of
barriers can be accomplished by gearing all the available resources to a reduced number of
basic headings (Yerlici, 1993)
An integrative approach to learning requires that all human knowledge from the atom to the
universe be encompassed under one single umbrella (Krauskoft and Bleiser, 1991). With the
advent of the new science of Mechatronics this search has become even more challenging
(Kaynak, 1996). The Biomedical Engineering Institute based in the Boğaziçi University has
been in full operation since two decades now, suggesting the idea that biomedical sciences
can be also integrated in this emerging field under the common name of Biomechatronics. As
expressed very eloquently by the President of Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology Dr.
Funio Harashima (1999), in the next century we will see an even broader use of this new
science (see Fig. 1).
CASE STUDY
Since the foundation of the the Boğaziçi University first research centre in the early 60’s
(Tanyolaç, 1965), the author has been able to follow the development in medical engineering
research that has culminated with the creation of the Biomedical Engineering Institute. The
institute now hosts also the headquarters of the UNESCO Regional Centre. Eager to reconcile
research work with education (İnelmen, 1997a) the author was prompted to make a survey on
recent developments in the field of medical diagnosis and treatment, hoping that the results
could provide a roadmap for new educational programs as the ones that are planned for the
next century. The first example of this new approach can be seen in İnelmen (1997b).
Following a recent publication in the newly launched IEEE Transaction on Information
Technology in Biomedicine (Laxminarayan et al., 1997) we believe that informational
technology is changing dramatically the way we live. Medical care is taken a new turn as we
approach the new millenium. Health –an important factor in the development of a nation- will
be enhanced by the use of new hardware and software. These recent developments make
possible the use of research work in the classroom and the medical care units. It is suggested
that virtualy reality is a “nascent technology” that will have an increasing impact on the way
medical practice will evolve in the coming future (Onaral, 1995).
The recent research work (Ekşi, 1997) aimed at enhancing the method of visualization of
brain data obtained from CT and MRI techniques was the starting point for the survey.
Medical care staff require a sound and time effective method of analyzing large quantities of
data in order to decide the next steps to be taken in the treatment of patients. This phase of the
medical practice can be simplified by the using of neural networks (Özkan et al., 1993).
Within the frame of this research the author was requested to implement a 3D visualization
technique using “computer aided design” software available in the market. Using this
software it is possible to use scanned data having up to 256 color grades representing different
tissue. Data is converted in 3-D voxels that can be rotated and separated according to color
(İnelmen, 1998a).
Minimal invasion surgery (MIS) is receiving increasing attention in the medical and
engineering research circles. By reducing to a minimum the amount of surgery required,
operation costs, the damage to the adjacent healthy tissue and rehabilitation time for the
patient have been considerably reduced. This new development requires the use of more
sophisticated image rendering techniques, improved planning procedures and complex
medical equipment. Integrating these three requirements in a comprehensive automatic
surgery system represents a new challenge in intelligent system design.
We strongly believe that integrating current work in different areas of medical engineering –
nervous, sensory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and tissue subsystems- will help in
enhancing future research work. The survey made on non-invasive techniques in diagnosis
and treatment, show encouraging prospects in enhancing medical and health care equipment.
The developments in the newly emerging technologies and research work in the field of
mechatronics and communication will make the virtual hospital a reality (Fig. 2).
The work summarized in the previous paragraphs show that there is a urgent need in taking a
more holistic approach to engineering education. Universities should be able play a key role
in securing that on one hand educational and research go hand in hand and graduates can cope
with the requirements of industry and government (İnelmen, 1996). Recently we are
observing that the three parties involved in technological development –namely university,
industry and government- are ever more competing in the fields of research and education.
This new phenomema is compared with the formation of “three helix” structure. We offer
here a possible scheme of integration of “hard” knowledge such as ecology, technology,
medicine and defence with the “soft” knowledge we encounter in the disciplines of sociology,
economics, politics, law, literature, art, education and philosophy.
FINDINGS
A direct consequence of recent technological developments, automatic surgery has been
enhanced with the introduction of more intelligent perception, reasoning and execution
subsystems. The perception subsytem should be able to identify objects, build maps, monitor
change and understand behaviour; the reasoning subsystem should learn the given task,
generate rules, predict events and make decisions and the execution subsytems should
calculate workload, describe dynamics, generate path and report conditions. Findings can be
summarized as follows:
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Data acquisition must have a higher degree of intelligence in order to fuse data coming
from different sources and develop a selective process to reduce the processing time.
Intelligent agents must recognize the environment where they operate, cope with
unexpected conditions that may come forward during navigation.
Design of complex systems having high degree of intelligence is only possible with the
closer cooperation of experts from different fields.
In the future “a repository of automatic surgery cases” can generate a knowledge base
from where medical staff can pool out previous experience using a case-based-reasoning
tools.
The science of mechatronics, which is emerging as a a new technology with the ability of
integrating several disciplines has opened new fields for research, biomechatronics being one
of the most recent spin-offs. We have the right to expect that medical devices developed in
the future, will be even more effective that the ones we are using today.
CONCLUSION
We would like to see the implementation of a “one research topic” common to all members of
the staff and student body as has been implemented in the Santa Fe Institute. As was recently
reported by one of the members of the staff of this institute, “adaptive complex systems” is
the major topic of interest of all the researchers working there. Rarely a member of this
institute continues on working for more than five year, a limit impossed by the contact
(İnelmen, 1998b).
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