跨領域機電整合技術探討與實踐

Abstract

機電整合技術自1970年代初期發展至今，已成功為產業帶來革命性的發展，其所帶來之自動化技術除降低人力成本外，同時提升產品品質與良率。若將該技術透過跨領域的合作，將可用以解決或改善各領域之現行方法進而提高競爭力。本論文提出多個機電跨領域應用實例，包含化學、農業、昆蟲及醫療領域，內容闡述如何依照各領域需求提出解決方案，最後分析其應用效益。 於化學應用上，過去固相微萃取(SPME)技術運用於農藥殘留檢測，最大之缺點在於樣品所需之加熱吸附時間過長，因而導致過程中多數時間都在等待樣品加熱及萃取完成。透過微波輔助加熱，可使加熱萃取時間降低為5~10分鐘內完成，相較於過去加熱方法所需之數小時甚至十幾個小時而言，所耗時間減少十倍以上。而透過機械手臂技術，可實現樣品加熱、萃取、脫附、清洗以及農藥微量分析等步驟之自動化程序，於是降低人為操作因素所造成之檢驗誤差。 於農業領域上，水果之品質除以外觀、大小、甜度等作為分類指標外，內部品質同樣也為重要議題，本論文顯示透過X光技術配合影像處理分析演算法可有效且快速的分析水果內部品質，此技術可被延伸應用於水果之進出口檢疫，有效改善現有之人工目視檢剖顯微鏡法，使檢測速率、誤判率、檢出率等效能皆有相當之改善。 於昆蟲領域上，昆蟲行為分析為一重要研究議題。本論文顯示影像辨識演算法可更快速且準確的分析螢火蟲發光行為，相較於現有之人工方法可提高100倍以上之分析效率，如此可使相關研究人員專注於後續之行為分析而不需耗費過多時間於資料之收集與計算。 於醫療領域 上，透過機電技術可將藥物經由外加磁場之控制導引或固定藥物於欲治療之病灶區域。本論文顯示使用有限元素分析方法可於電腦上模擬不同磁場與方法對靶向藥物治療所帶來之差異性，用以協助醫療人員找出最佳之靶向治療模型，研究結果發現引入化學工程常用之高磁場梯度分離技術於醫療領域之藥物靶向治療，可改善過去靶向治療無法有效應用於動脈周遭組織之限制。

The mechatronics technology has successfully brought a revolutionary development for the industry since its development in early 1970's. It will improve the current methods to increase competitiveness as expectedly, if the mechatronics technology is applied to interdisciplinary cooperation. This paper presents several interdisciplinary mechatronics applications, including chemistry, agriculture, entomol and medical fields. It focuses on how to propose solutions according to the demands of each field, and shows the efficiency of the application in the end. In the chemical field, the drawback of the solid phase microextraction (SPME) method used in pesticide residue detection is the inefficiency in the heating process for adsorption, and the inaccuracy detection results caused by human operation. This paper shows that adopting the microwave technology can help to reduce the heating time from several hours to minutes. In addition, the automatic technology can be used to develop a robotic analyzer to automatically process all the steps including sample heating, extraction, desorption, cleaning and pesticide analysis to ensure that all steps are accurately controlled. In the agricultural field, in addition to quality indexes of the fruit such as appearance, sizes, and saccharinity, internal quality issues have also drawn much concern in recent years. This paper shows how to develop an X-ray system with image processing algorithms to inspect the internal quality of the fruit. The method could be extended and applied to the import and export quarantine on fruit. This will effectively improve the current human inspection with the microscopy method, making a significant improvement on efficiency and accuracy. In the entomol field, insect behavior analysis is an important research issue. Previous studies on firefly’s flashing patterns were done by recording videos in the field, and then replaying the videos later in the laboratory. Estimating the duration and intervals of the flashing patterns is a time-consuming and tedious work, and would create errors if no digitization is employed. To reduce the time consumed by manual quantification, this paper shows how to develop an image process algorithm to analyze the behavior of firefly glowing more rapidly and accurately. In the medical field, to reduce the side effects of cancer treatments from therapeutic drugs, several drug target methods based on magnetic theories have been proposed. These methods use magnetic nanoparticles as drug carriers. After injecting the nanoparticles into vein, an external static magnetic field is utilized to establish the magnetic force on nanoparticles, so that the nanoparticles can be concentrated on the disease site. This paper shows that the computer simulation technology can be used to investigate the efficiency of different conditions of the magnetic field. The simulation result shows that the high gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) method is one of the efficient ways to improve the probability of retaining nanoparticles on the disease site.