Learning About Mechatronics - Colorado Courses?

The University of Colorado, Denver (www.cudenver.edu) has electrical and mechanical engineering, so they might have robotics or mechatronics classes. I competed with a team from there in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition when I was in undergrad at VT. There were some good guys, but it sounded like they were out on their own and robotics wasn't yet established there. They would have graduated by now, so that program might have died with them... worth looking into though. If you can't find a specific mechatronics class, just call an ME, EE, or CE professor and any of them should be able to tell you what classes might be useful and how to take/audit them.

MIT OpenCourseWare rules - here is the main site: http://ocw.mit.edu/
....and here is the link to the mechatronics course: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mechanical-Engineering/2-737Spring1999/CourseHome/index.htm

OCW and programs from about a dozen other schools are becoming available as podcasts through iTunes as well. Not sure if mechatronics is on there yet.

I'm a mechanical engineer and have flipped through a few courses - in general, the lectures and content are very good. Since it is just starting out and they are basically piping the normal classes directly into this, the material isn't tailored for distance learning - watching a webcam quality video of a classroom lecture isn't exactly riveting. As a result, you'll have to do some extra leg work like getting books or other support materials to get more out of it.

USC has very good distance learning undergraduate and graduate courses as well, but you'll have to actually enroll for those. In that case, you do get real interaction with other students and professors. I haven't done it, but I've looked into it and it seems almost as good as a face to face class.

I'm sure there's more out there, but that should give you a start. Mechatronics is very hands on, so I would suggest buying whatever kits are used in one of those online courses, or finding one on your own. You can check out Basic Stamp, Oopic, TattleTale, or other microcrontrollers that you can buy full robotics learning kits with. Those are often tailored towards middle or high school kids, but you'll learn the same concepts, and they are cheap.

Good luck Mechatronicsing!