Conclusions
In this paper, a new mechatronic index is proposed for evaluating mechatronic alternatives in the conceptual design phase. The design criteria aggregated to the index are derived by investigating the mechatronic advances and from the Multi Annual Roadmap for Robotics in Europe, where the collective knowledge of experts is presented in a very compact form. After thorough investigation, seven robot abilities from the MAR are selected as generic mechatronic abilities and their adapted levels are scored. In formulating the proposed mechatronic index the complexity and the cost are taken into account on top of the seven criteria/abilities. The importance of the criteria as well as their interaction is modelled with fuzzy measures and the discrete Choquet integral is used to formulate the design index. The 2-additive fuzzy measures are used to deal with the Choquet integral complexity risen from the considered interactive criteria. The proposed mechatronics index is used to evaluate the alternative conceptual solutions for the design of a small firefighting robot. The design steps to determine the “best” solution among the conceptual design alternatives based on the proposed index are presented. The proposed index helped to select the alternative solution with the most important mechatronic characteristics. The most important outcomes of this paper are the followings: (a). The designers can use a higher variety of criteria than using the previously proposed mechatronic indices to evaluate the conceptual design solutions. (b). The criteria have more scoring levels than the previously composed mechatronic indices helping the designers to justify their decisions for the selected concepts. (c). The designers have the ability to select the solution that will incorporate mechatronic characteristics. Particularly facilitates the rough quantification of a usually quite qualitative and intuitive evaluation of design solutions considering the mechatronic characteristics. Future work includes: (a) to investigate and model the interactions within subsets of criteria with more than two members. (b) to develop a scoring method that maps better the advancement between the successive levels of each criterion and (c) to apply the method in other applications.
