Invitation
The organizing committee is pleased to invite you to participate in the 5th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems to be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, September 13-15. The conference is technically sponsored by the IFAC Technical Committee on Mechatronic Systems and will be held concurrently with the 2010 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference (DSCC). There is a strong overlap between the focus of the IFAC Symposium and that of the ASME/DSC Conference, and the organizing committees of the two events have worked out schemes to maximize the participants' experience from technical, social and financial points of view -- one registration fee grants access to both conferences!

Scope
Many technical processes and products in the area of mechanical and electrical engineering show an increasing integration of mechanics with electronics and information processing. This integration is between the components (hardware) and the information-driven functions (software), resulting in integrated systems called mechatronic systems. The development of mechatronic systems involves finding an optimal balance between the basic mechanical structure, sensor and actuator implementation, automatic digital information processing and overall control. This synergy requires innovative solutions. The practice of mechatronics requires multidisciplinary expertise across a range of disciplines, such as: mechanical engineering, electronics, information technology, and decision making theories. The goal of the 5th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, following in the footsteps of the first conference in Darmstadt, the second in Berkeley, the third in Sydney, and the fourth in Heidelburg, is to bring together experts from different areas, to give an overview of the state-of-the-art of mechatronics and to present recent research results and perspectives of the future development in this multidisciplinary field. Relevant topics for the symposium include: actuators and sensors; robotics and machine vision; vibration and noise control; smart structures; motion control; MEMS; automotive systems; system identification and control of mechatronic systems and mechatronics education.