awesome-mechatronics

A list of awesome mechatronics books, courses and software.
https://github.com/engyasin/awesome-mechatronics

Last synced: 16 days ago
JSON representation

0. What Mechatronics Means Now
- Read the definition debate yourself 📄
  - The Evolution of Mechatronics Engineering and Its Relationship with Industry 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0
  - Mechatronics in Industry 4.0 and 5.0: advancing synergy, innovations, sustainability, and challenges
  - Skills for Physical Artificial Intelligence
  - Intelligence as Computation
  - ITU-T F.748.66 - level attempt to standardise what "embodied AI system" means.
  - Evolution from mechatronics to cyber-physical systems: an educational point of view
  - Skills for Physical Artificial Intelligence
10. Hardware You Can Actually Buy or Build
- 8.4 Safety, assurance and governance
  - SO-101 / SO-ARM101 - DoF arm pair | 🆓 open hardware. Leader/follower teleoperation; the LeRobot reference platform. Kits from Hiwonder, Seeed, WowRobo. ⭐ |
  - LeKiwi - 101 on a holonomic base; open source |
  - Koch v1.1 - DoF arm | The predecessor design; still a good build |
  - ALOHA / ALOHA 2
  - Open Duck Mini - robot learning platform |
  - Reachy 2 / Reachy Mini
  - Unitree Go2 / G1
  - Franka Research 3 - DoF arm | The academic manipulation standard; excellent torque control |
  - UR cobots
  - TurtleBot 4
  - Duckietown
  - Open Dynamic Robot Initiative
11. Classic Mechatronic Systems
- 8.4 Safety, assurance and governance
  - **ABS** - slip estimation from noisy sensors under hard real-time constraints. The canonical automotive mechatronic system.
  - **3D printers** - systems case study. 🧪
  - **GNSS/INS**
  - **PLCs** - cycle computation; a genuinely different computational model worth understanding.
  - **Hybrid & electric drivetrains** - split control, energy management, thermal.
  - **Washing machines** - driven sensor minimisation. Deceptively deep.
  - **Hard disk drives** - precision mass-produced servo system ever built; nanometre positioning at kHz bandwidth.
  - **Surgical robots**
  - **Wafer steppers** - nanometre stages, feed-forward everything, the field's hardest control problems.
13. Journals, Conferences, Communities
- 8.4 Safety, assurance and governance
  - Mechatronics (Elsevier)
  - IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO)
  - International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
  - Science Robotics
  - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
  - IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics / Informatics
  - Mechanism and Machine Theory
  - Frontiers in Robotics and AI
  - ICRA - ras.org/conferences-workshops/fully-sponsored/iros) — the two big robotics conferences
  - RSS - to-noise; where Diffusion Policy and ACT appeared
  - CoRL
  - AIM
  - Hannover Messe - munich.com/) — where industrial reality shows up
  - NVIDIA GTC
  - Hugging Face Robotics
  - IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
  - r/robotics - automation community online) · [r/ControlTheory](https://reddit.com/r/ControlTheory)
14. Related Awesome Lists
- 8.4 Safety, assurance and governance
  - Awesome Embedded and IoT Security
  - Awesome C++ - python)
  - Awesome Computer Vision
  - Awesome Machine Learning - deep-learning)
  - Awesome ROS2
  - Awesome Robotics - robotics-libraries)
  - Awesome VLA
  - Awesome Physical AI
  - Awesome LLM Robotics
  - Awesome Embodied AI
  - robotics-coursework
  - Awesome Embedded - embedded/awesome-embedded-rust)
  - Awesome Electronics
  - Awesome Mechanical Engineering
  - Awesome TinyML
  - Awesome MCP Servers
1. Start Here: Learning Paths
- Path A — Beginner, hands-on first (0–6 months) ⭐
- Path B — Undergraduate / career-switcher (6–18 months)
  - OpenPLC - 1200, plus one OPC UA client.
  - Robot Learning: A Tutorial - ramp from classical control to learned policies, with runnable `lerobot` examples.
- Path C — Graduate / research 🔬
  - Underactuated Robotics - rich control is hard.
  - Towards a Unified Understanding of Robot Manipulation: A Comprehensive Survey
  - Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotics: A Review Towards Real-World Applications
  - LIBERO - env/SimplerEnv), [RoboCasa](https://robocasa.ai/)) and reproduce one result before you propose anything.
2. Foundations: Books & Courses
- Control & dynamics (free where possible) 📖
- Core mechatronics textbooks 📖
  - Mechatronics: Electronic Control Systems in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
  - Machine Vision and Mechatronics in Practice
  - Introduction to Mechatronics and Measurement Systems
  - Automotive Mechatronics
  - Mechatronic Systems: Modelling and Simulation with HDLs - based modelling of mixed-domain systems.
  - The Mechatronics Handbook - edition PDF. Reference work, not a textbook.
  - Control of Mechatronic Systems
- Courses worth your time 🎓
  - Learn 5 PLCs in a Day - vendor PLC exposure |
  - From Wire to PLC
  - Wearable Robotics — Exoskeletons - made |
  - Modern Robotics Specialization
  - SLAM lectures
  - Sim-to-Real with the SO-101
  - LeRobot docs & tutorials - on, end to end ⭐ |
  - Introduction to Robotics CS223A
  - SLAM lectures
  - LeRobot docs & tutorials - on, end to end ⭐ |
- Machine learning for engineers 📖
- Robotics 📖
3. The Mechanical Side, Seen From Mechatronics
- 3.1 Actuation & transmission
  - Compact Gearboxes for Modern Robotics: A Review
  - Quasi-Direct Drive Actuation for a Lightweight Hip Exoskeleton with High Backdrivability and High Bandwidth - offs.
  - Cycloidal Quasi-Direct Drive Actuators with Learning-Based Torque Estimation
  - Variable Impedance Actuators: A Review
  - SimpleFOC - oriented control on Arduino-class hardware. The fastest way to understand BLDC control by doing.
  - ODrive - performance BLDC controllers used across the hobby-to-research spectrum.
  - TMotor / CubeMars AK-series - facto QDD actuators for legged robot builds.
  - Compact Gearboxes for Modern Robotics: A Review
- 3.2 Compliance, contact and impedance
  - Series Elastic Actuators
  - Backdrivable actuators in robotics
  - Mechatronic whole-body co-design of a quadruped robot integrating local compliance
  - Drake - rich simulation you can trust.
- 3.3 Mechanical intelligence & morphological computation 🔬
  - Perspectives on Intelligence in Soft Robotics
  - Reprogrammable metamaterial robot with embodied versatile computation and mechanical intelligence - wave metamaterials performing analog and logic operations inside a crawling robot.
  - The 2024 Active Metamaterials Roadmap - morphing metamaterials as embodied intelligence.
  - Exploring Embodied Intelligence in Soft Robotics: A Review
  - Morphological design methodologies of soft robots
  - Reprogrammable metamaterial robot with embodied versatile computation and mechanical intelligence - wave metamaterials performing analog and logic operations inside a crawling robot.
  - Morphological design methodologies of soft robots
- 3.4 Design, simulation and manufacturing tools
  - FreeCAD
  - SolidWorks - ins |
  - Fusion
  - nTop - driven design |
  - Ansys
  - CalculiX - aster.org/) | FEA solver | 🆓 | Free FEA; usable via FreeCAD FEM workbench |
  - OpenModelica - domain sim | 🆓 | The right tool for mechanical+hydraulic+electrical system models |
  - Simscape - domain sim | 💵 | The commercial equivalent, tightly coupled to Simulink |
  - Blender
  - PrusaSlicer - direction strength |
  - ToOptix
4. Electronics, Embedded & Edge
- Edge AI / TinyML
  - Edge Impulse - to-end TinyML: data capture → training → C++ export.
  - TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers / LiteRT
  - MicroFlow - bit MCUs with 2 kB RAM. 📄 [paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19432)
  - State of Edge AI on Microcontrollers in 2026 - eyed, hype-free assessment; note the trend of silicon vendors absorbing the tooling layer.
  - TinyML - cookbook-second-edition/9781837637362) 💵
- Electronics design
  - KiCad - capable. No reason to pay for hobby or small-team PCB work.
  - Fritzing
  - Proteus - simulation.
  - Falstad Circuit Simulator
  - LTspice
  - The Art of Electronics
  - Practical Electronics for Inventors
  - LabVIEW
- Firmware & RTOS
  - Zephyr RTOS - neutral, device-tree based, Linux-Foundation governed, huge board support.
  - FreeRTOS
  - micro-ROS
  - PlatformIO - board build system; escape from the Arduino IDE.
  - Embassy - hal`](https://github.com/rust-embedded/embedded-hal) 🆓 — async embedded Rust. Increasingly serious for safety-relevant firmware; memory safety without a GC.
  - Renode
- Microcontrollers & compute
  - Arduino
  - ESP32 family - Fi/BLE + dual core + enough RAM for micro-ROS |
  - Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2350 - time IO | PIO state machines are excellent for encoder decoding and step generation |
  - STM32
  - Teensy 4.x - rate control loops | 600 MHz Cortex-M7; underrated for 10 kHz+ loops |
  - Raspberry Pi 5
  - NVIDIA Jetson Orin / Thor - robot policy inference | Thor / T4000 (Blackwell, 2026) is what current VLAs are deployed on |
5. Industrial Automation, Industry 4.0 / 5.0
- Connectivity, information models and digital twins
  - OPC UA - model standard. Not just a protocol: it's a type system for machines. 🆓 [open62541](https://www.open62541.org/) is the reference open-source stack.
  - Asset Administration Shell (AAS) - 1:2023**. The standardised digital twin. 🆓 [Eclipse BaSyx](https://basyx.org/) and [AASX Package Explorer](https://github.com/admin-shell-io/aasx-package-explorer) are the tools to start with.
  - MQTT
  - AutomationML (IEC 62714)
  - RAMI 4.0
  - open-source reference tooling exists
  - Asset Administration Shell in Manufacturing: Applications and Relationship with Digital Twin
- Controllers & languages
  - IEC 61131-3
  - IEC 61499 - driven automation. The intended successor for distributed control; slow adoption but conceptually important. 🔧 [Eclipse 4diac](https://eclipse.dev/4diac/) 🆓 is the open reference implementation.
  - Beremiz - 3.
  - CODESYS - neutral runtime behind many PLC brands.
  - TwinCAT - based control platform; increasingly the platform where AI-in-automation experiments happen first.
  - Siemens TIA Portal / STEP 7
  - Programmable Logic Controllers
  - TwinCAT - based control platform; increasingly the platform where AI-in-automation experiments happen first.
  - Siemens TIA Portal / STEP 7
- Simulation & commissioning
  - Factory I/O - in-class for learning. 🧪
  - NVIDIA Isaac Sim / Omniverse - based digital twins of full production cells.
  - Visual Components - US/tecnomatix/products/process-simulate-software/) 💵 — commercial virtual commissioning.
  - Ignition
6. The Robotics Software Stack
- Kinematics, dynamics & optimisation libraries
  - Pinocchio - body dynamics with analytical derivatives. The backbone of most modern whole-body controllers.
  - CasADi
  - acados
  - Crocoddyl - family optimal control for legged/multi-contact robots. 🔬
  - OMPL - based motion planning.
  - Python Robotics
- Perception
  - OpenCV
  - Open3D
  - SAM 2
  - FoundationPose - DoF pose estimation for novel objects.
  - ORB-SLAM3 - Map](https://introlab.github.io/rtabmap/) 🆓 — visual and RGB-D SLAM.
  - Nerfstudio - project/gsplat) 🆓 — NeRF and 3D Gaussian splatting; now used for real-to-sim asset capture.
- ROS 2 — current state (as of mid-2026)
- Simulation — this changed completely in 2025–2026
  - **Newton** - source, GPU-accelerated, differentiable; built on NVIDIA Warp + OpenUSD; developed by NVIDIA + Google DeepMind + Disney Research under the Linux Foundation. v1.0 GA at GTC 2026. Bundles MuJoCo-Warp and Disney's Kamino (closed-loop mechanisms) solvers, SDF collision, hydroelastic contact, and deformables. |
  - MuJoCo - rich control research; CPU version remains the easiest to debug |

Programming Languages

Python 11 Jupyter Notebook 5 HTML 3 C++ 3 Liquid 1 Rust 1 CMake 1 TypeScript 1

awesome-mechatronics

0. What Mechatronics Means Now

Read the definition debate yourself 📄

10. Hardware You Can Actually Buy or Build

8.4 Safety, assurance and governance

11. Classic Mechatronic Systems

8.4 Safety, assurance and governance

13. Journals, Conferences, Communities

8.4 Safety, assurance and governance

14. Related Awesome Lists

8.4 Safety, assurance and governance

1. Start Here: Learning Paths

Path A — Beginner, hands-on first (0–6 months) ⭐

Path B — Undergraduate / career-switcher (6–18 months)

Path C — Graduate / research 🔬

2. Foundations: Books & Courses

Control & dynamics (free where possible) 📖

Core mechatronics textbooks 📖

Courses worth your time 🎓

Machine learning for engineers 📖

Robotics 📖

3. The Mechanical Side, Seen From Mechatronics

3.1 Actuation & transmission

3.2 Compliance, contact and impedance

3.3 Mechanical intelligence & morphological computation 🔬

3.4 Design, simulation and manufacturing tools

4. Electronics, Embedded & Edge

Edge AI / TinyML

Electronics design

Firmware & RTOS

Microcontrollers & compute

5. Industrial Automation, Industry 4.0 / 5.0

Connectivity, information models and digital twins

Controllers & languages

Simulation & commissioning

6. The Robotics Software Stack

Kinematics, dynamics & optimisation libraries

Perception

ROS 2 — current state (as of mid-2026)

Simulation — this changed completely in 2025–2026