Creating a new paradigm Mechatronics

and future challenges

The hysteresis curve as a precursor to mechatronics
Mechatronics is a unification of two technical elements (mechanics and electronics), but it is used nowadays in a
wider sense as a noun and employed in company names, magazine titles and department names in universities.
When I review the history and relevant matters around this term, I realise that my mechatronics is linked with
magnetic hysteresis in various ways. It may deserve noting that the term hysteresis was invented by James Ewing
around 1880 when he was a young professor at the University of Tokyo.

Hiroshi Matsuo, a nonfiction writer, investigated thoroughly the innovations by Japanese scientists/engineers and
concluded that the starting period of the Tohoku Imperial University was astonishing; this university was
established in Sendai, located 350 kilometres north of Tokyo with a population of 120,000. One of the major
individuals there was Hidetsugu Yagi, known as an inventor of the Yagi-Uda antenna.

I remember listening to a story about Hidetsugu Yagi in a mechanical survey class given by a renowned professor
who had known well this great electro-communication professor, who had a strong link with the UK, Germany
and also the USA. So I shall survey briefly my path in reaching Professor Naruses class at Tohoku University.

I entered the Faculty of Engineering of Tohoku University as a freshman in 1958. It was nine years after the
reform of Japans education system. The Imperial University had absorbed the Second Higher School, Sendai
Higher Technical School, and others to be the new Tohoku University. The faculty had nine departments
including the just-established Electronics Department, which was about to construct its building and facilities. We
had to decide on one department for specialisation after spending a year and a half on the core engineering
curriculum. The reason for choosing the newly instituted subject of electronic engineering as my area of
specialism is that electronics was attractive among many students including myself, and my scores in general
physics were good. Max Plancks famous lecture Kausalgestz und Willensfreiheit (Causality and Freedom of Will),
which was a text book for reading practice of German, increased my curiosity about quantum physics, a relevant
discipline for electronics. It should be noted that the core curriculums (science subjects, mathematics, languages
and humanities) were taught by professors who had a good tradition of elite education at the Higher School for
those who were about to study their specialities in an imperial university.

When I attended the classes of the electronics department, however, I found it difficult to fully understand the
electro-physics as described by Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Irvin Schrdinger. The reasons for my difficulty
may have been due to less teaching experiences of the new staff, but this could be a factor in my attempting to
seek other areas of electronics rather than applied physics for my future career.

The key roles of Hidetsugu Yagi and others in pioneering electronics in Japan
The course of general mechanical engineering was given by Professor Naruse, who was known to have played an
important role in Toyota's early history in the development of passenger cars. In this course, he discussed the
Western technical culture subjects that went beyond mechanical engineering and greatly affected many of us, each
in his own way. In my case, I was inspired to come up with the notion of mechatronics. He often talked about his
own life experiences. One of his interesting topics was about his experience in 1937 when he was studying at the
Institute of Measurement Engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. One day Hidetsugu Yagi visited
the German technical college to invite his former mentor, Professor Barkhausen, to Japan with the purpose of
stimulating Japanese research on electro-communication. Yagi had shown Naruse around the laboratory of
Barkhausen. He was much impressed to see Yagi being greeted with great respect by the lab researchers. To the
younger researchers Yagi gave fatherly advice and encouragement, but with the more senior members he engaged
in a technical discussion, often citing relevant Japanese reports with which he had been involved.

I wish to discuss the pioneering role of Hidetsugu Yagi in Japans early stages of electronics, but before that I must
begin with Hantaro Nagaoka, who is known as the father of Japans modern science. His prominent contribution to
science, including the saturnine model of atomic structure in 1904, can be traced back to the influence of Professor
James Ewing, who had been appointed a professor at Tokyo Imperial University in 1878 at the age of 23, where he
started the study of magnetism and seismology. As stated earlier, he coined this word in Tokyo. (After returning
to the UK, Ewing was appointed professor at University College Dundee, then at Cambridge University and later
as Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and became famous for directing the British codebreaking operation
during World War I.) It is well known that Joseph John Thomson discovered the electron in 1897 and presented an
atomic model in which electrons are distributed like the seeds in a watermelon. It was not until 1911 that
Rutherford confirmed by experiment that Nagaokas model is closer to reality.

When Tohoku Imperial University was founded as the third imperial (i.e. national) university in 1907, the science
department was established first and Nagaoka was commissioned by the Japanese government to select its faculty.
He selected Kotaro Honda, Shirota Kusakabe, Keiichi Aichi and Jun Ishiwara, all of whom were his former
students at Tokyo Imperial University. In 1913 Yagi, who was then teaching at the Sendai Higher Technical
School, was instructed by the Government, upon the advice of Nagaoka and Honda, to go abroad for three years in
preparation for starting the faculty of engineering at Tohoku University. Yagis wish was for the electrical
department, which he was to head, to become a research centre in light-current engineering. Professor Barkhausen
at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden was the worlds foremost expert on light-current engineering at the time,
and so Yagi decided to study with him.

Links between Hidetsugu Yagi and the UK
In the summer of 1914, when World War I broke out, Yagi was in Switzerland for a holiday. As he was unable to
return to Dresden he decided to move to Professor John A. Flemings laboratory in London. Yagi was impressed
by Flemings words: Wireless technology is such a fascinating subject that once you have taken it up, you cannot
get out of it for your lifetime. Fleming was a very good mentor who helped him improve his English writing
skills as a scientist. However, Yagi was not satisfied with just being a passive learner during his stay in the UK,
and thought he would contribute to the Wests understanding of Japan, of which he was quite proud. Then Yagi
displayed his extraordinary talent for finding the inborn talents of people he met and drawing them out. He put an
advertisement in the personnel section of the newspaper offering Japanese language lessons for free, and one of
those who responded was Arthur Waley. Waley, who later became one of the most accomplished Sinologists in the
West, was still a young worker at the British Museum but he had already acquired a relatively good knowledge of
classic Chinese. He also harboured the ambition to translate The Tale of Genji and needed someone to help him
read the Japanese classics. Waley did indeed go on to produce a famous translation of The Tale of Genji, which
was received with wide acclaim.

In the summer of 1915, London came increasingly under German Zeppelin bombing raids, and so Yagi went to the
United States, where he studied for a short period with George W. Pierce, the inventor of the Pierce oscillator, at
Harvard University, after which he returned to Sendai in 1916. He was appointed professor at the Department of
Electrical Engineering at Tohoku University in Sendai in 1919. The other two departments were mechanical and
chemical engineering. In 1920, Barkhausen and Kurz were successful in generating a shortwave of 40 cm
wavelength. As there were no domestic wireless engineering companies they had to import wireless instruments
from the Marconi Company or Telefunken. Yagis aspiration to make Tohoku University the Japanese Mecca of
light-current engineering was started in such circumstances.

In 1922 Albert Einstein accepted an invitation to visit Japan and give a nationwide lecture tour on the theory of
relativity. Jun Ishiwara, who acted as the main interpreter during Einsteins stay and had studied under Einstein in
Switzerland, was said to be the only Japanese who really understood the theory of relativity. The year before
Einsteins visit, he became embroiled in a love scandal with a well known poetess and resigned from Tohoku
University, becoming a science writer/translator as well as a poet. In Sendai, Einstein met Kotaro Honda, Shirota
Kusakabe, and Keiichi Aichi of the Physics Department, of which he is said to have written years later Sendai is
one of the best cities for academic studies and its fearful competition partner is Tohoku University. Tragically,
Aichi died from food poisoning a year later and then, the next year, Kusakabe died from erysipelas (an acute
streptococcal infection of the skin). While the Physics Department had lost many of its creative minds, the
Electrical Engineering Department headed by Yagi soon entered a period of fertile creativity.

In 1923 one of Yagis students found an interesting phenomenon when measuring the eigen frequencies of an
experimental setup. Yagi was inspired by the more detailed data reported by his assistants and conceived of a
directional antenna. In 1927 Yagi filed a UK patent for his directional antenna, which was eventually bought by
the Marconi company. The royalties helped young Uda, who was then a lecturer, to carry out further research to
develop the Yagi antenna to a practical level. In 1927 Kinjiro Okabe, another student of Yagi, invented a vacuum
tube known as the split-anode magnetron that oscillated powerful shortwave electromagnetic waves. A powerful
oscillation and a directional antenna are two indispensable pieces of equipment for designing a radar system, but
the word or concept of radar had not yet been created. It was in 1935 that electromagnetic waves were
successfully used for detecting an aircraft in Britain, and it was in 1941 that Radar was coined by two Americans,
standing for Radio Detection and Ranging.

From light-current engineering to electronics
When Yagi visited the United States in January 1928, he was invited to give speeches about his directional antenna
and the split-anode magnetron at a convention of the American Institute of Radio Engineers. There Yagi heard the
word 'electronics' for the first time. The word electronics had been coined as early as 1910 (perhaps in the UK)
but had been used to describe the science of electron behaviour by vacuum tube physicists. When Yagi heard it in
the late 1920s it was just beginning to be used in the U.S. to refer to the technology on non-radio industrial
applications of the vacuum tube.

In spite of Yagis desire to establish Tohoku University as a Mecca of light-current engineering, it was not until
1935, after he had taken a second post at Osaka University while retaining his position at Tohoku University, that
RIEC (Research Institute of Electrical Communication) was established, but their main subject was electro
acoustic technology. In 1941 the Department of Electrical Communication was established at Tohoku University.
When deciding on the departments name information engineering had been considered as another candidate but
it was rejected for the reason that it could, in that wartime era, suggest espionage.

After Yagi left Tohoku University, his vision and spirit was carried on by Professor Yasushi Watanabe, who
brought up capable researchers in the area known today as electronics. Watanabes activities were not limited to
his university. I shall now present an anecdote, quoted from Japans Winning Margins, that describes what took
place sometime about three years after the war had ended:

On 12 July 1948 came the announcement of the invention of the germanium transistor, which had
actually been discovered the year before. Not long after, Professor Yasushi Watanabe was summoned to
GHQ. An American officer whispered into the professors ear that a device called a transistor had been
invented at the Bell Telephone Laboratory. He was told that it was something made of germanium for
amplifying electric signals. As the Japanese scholar had once thought about a solid-state amplifier, he
quickly understood the importance of the new invention. He saw that on the officials desk lay the
documents announcing the details, and asked to be allowed to read them. This was not officially
allowed; but instead the official left the room, leaving the documents on his desk. The lucky scholar
quickly read through them and took notes on the important points. Before returning to Sendai to give the
order to his laboratory staff to start research into the transistor, the professor conveyed the news to the
Head of the Electro-Technical Laboratory belonging to MITI, which later played an important role in this
area. ----

In the period following World War II, the UK placed much emphasis on the development of computer technology,
while Japanese engineers and researchers focused on electronic devices for building compact radios and
tape-recorders. Morita and Ibuka founded Sony and zealously pursued consumer electronics. Precision
engineering was advanced, too, as seen in camera manufacturing. In the 1950s the word electronics (and its
Japanese translation denshi kogaku) was adopted by the Japanese engineering community to replace
light-current engineering.

How I came to devise the word Mechatronics
As stated earlier, I chose the Department of Electronics. Yagis vision 40 years earlier of creating a major research
centre for light-current engineering at Tohoku University was then realized as the three departments Electrical
Communication, Electrical Engineering, and Electronic Engineering and with RIEC together formed a large and
cohesive group of mutually supportive academic/research organisations. Japan had recently entered a period of
rapid economic growth, later called the Japanese post-war economic miracle, and in 1959, Japan was elected to
become the host of the 1964 Summer Olympics, which built up a tremendous excitement to make the Tokyo
Olympics a great success. Great changes were about to take place around the world, and in science and
engineering too, and the time seemed ripe for new ideas and paradigms. Just as Yagi had set his sights on
light-current engineering some 40 years before, our class of freshly enrolled students sensed a new freedom to set
our goals on expanding horizons. Solid-state transistors and optoelectronics represented new technologies based
on quantum mechanics, and many of my classmates took up studies in these fields. Of course, there were others
like myself who chose to pursue different paths. While attending a survey course on mechanical engineering by
Professor Naruse, the great expert on mechanical gears, I came up with the idea of supplanting mechanical
speed/torque converters with electro-mechanical means; perhaps this could be called the origins of mechatronics.

In the strong engineering tradition that was set up by Hidetsugu Yagi (when I was listening to Professor Naruse at
his general machinery course), I may have sensed the possibility of unification of two disciplines that had
developed largely independently of each other. The word mechatronics differs from electronics in their
derivation: the meaning of electronics is straightforward, at least initially referring to the field dealing with
electrons, whereas mechatronics is a portmanteau word derived from electronics and mechanics. For better or
for worse, this word has become accepted in the industrial sector around the world.

The mysterious hysteresis motor

The subject of traditional electric machinery, taught by Professor Fukushima, was compulsory for electronic
engineering students. This was a very difficult course, even for students like me who had been interested in
electric motors as a hobby ever since my childhood days. Yet, when Professor Fukushima explained the principle
of the hysteresis motor as a type of special machine, everything was clear to me. I was excited by all the
knowledge that I had gained from mathematics, general physics and electromagnetism given in the speciality
course; these were brought together within a few seconds so that I was able to understand the principle of this
mysterious motor. Moreover this dissolved my frustration over the textbook on electromagnetic theory authored
by a notable professor who used to be the rival of Yagi. He dealt with the power loss due to hysteresis but leaving
out in-depth consideration; the fundamental principle of generation of mechanical torque was missing.

Hysteresis is known as the nonlinear phenomenon in which magnetic induction B and field intensity H vary in the
way shown in Figure 1. In air and in most normal materials, B is only proportional to H and this implies that these
materials are not susceptible to magnetism. Iron and its alloys display hysteresis, which can be characterised such
that the time variation of magnetic induction delays the variation of field intensity. Here H is the cause and B is
the result. The reason that when a type of time causality is arranged, spatial arrangement (such as in a ring
magnetic material) mechanical torque is created, was very clear to me at that time.

Moreover, the motor starts and ramps using a hysteresis major loop but after the motor is pulled into the speed of
the magnetic field formed by the windings, the motor torque and load torque is automatically balanced using the
minor loops! Thus a rotation with constant speeds can be attained with a very simple scheme without sophisticated
means. Multi speed operation in a 1-to-2 or 1-2-4 ratio was available by design of the windings.




























Figure 1. Hysteresis and how to use its characteristics in a motor and for magnetic recording. The
relation between magnetic flux density B and field intensity H displays non-linear behaviour. This
can produce rotational torque in a construction as an electric motor, but can also be used for signal
recording, which is information storage in current terminology.
A ring made of an
alloy having an
appropriate coercive
intensity not too
high and not too low.

(a) Hysteresis is originally a nonlinear time
relationship between B and H. Origin O
denotes the non-magnetised state. When field
intensity H is applied the magnetic state varies
along with the initial curve. However, when H
is reduced after the peak value, magnetic flux
density B does not follow the initial curve but
a major loop.

(b) In a hysteresis motor the magnetic states
(B/H relations) trace a major loop and many
minor loops. Before the rotor speed reaches
the rotating field speed, the B/H operating
point traces on the major loop altering
magnetic polarisation, but after the speed has
reached synchronism, the operating point
travels on minor loops corresponding to the
load torque at each part of the ring.
Major loop
(c) When hysteresis takes place in different time
functions at different circumferential coordinate
in a magnetic ring core, a torque can be
developed around the shaft.

Magnetic tape

Hard disk

(d) Hysteresis can be used for information recording or
storage.
Coercive
intensity
Hc
O

Minor loop

B
H

Major loop
Initial curve
B
H


Minor loops


The usefulness of hysteresis I learnt from the RIEC professors was in the area of electro acoustics: the recording
and reproduction of sounds and voice. It was a surprise to me that the magnetic phenomenon known as hysteresis
can be utilized for both electro communication and mechanical motion!

In my view, the hysteresis motor represented a bridging technology that eventually led to the combining of
mechanics and electronics, i.e. mechatronics. (See Figure 2.)

When semiconductor technology advanced enough to produce integrated circuits and allowed the development of
magneto-electronic sensors, hysteresis motors were supplanted by brushless DC motors, which were smaller and
allowed for even finer control. The introduction of brushless motors with their electronic controls marked the true
advent of the mechatronics age. Nowadays brushless motors employ high-energy magnets, allowing them to
become quite compact. These magnets employing rare-earth materials were developed by another researcher at the
Metal Material Laboratory of Tohoku University. Thus, mechatronics came into existence as a result of the
integration of mechanics, electronics, and magnets (or magnetism).

As I mentioned earlier, the Scottish scientist James Ewing initiated the study of magnetic hysteresis while he was
teaching in Japan. Charles Steinmetz had the original idea for an AC motor that can run using this magnetic
hysteresis after he emigrated to America in 1889 via Switzerland from Germany. B.R.Teare developed, for his
PhD study in 1937, a mathematical theory to explain the principle that magnetic hysteresis can produce torque to
start an AC motor as an asynchronous motor using a hysteresis major loop and this eventually converts into a
synchronous motor automatically using the minor loops! Thus a rotation with constant speeds can be attained with
a very simple scheme without sophisticated means. He wrote a paper in the Proceedings of the American Institute
of Electrical Engineers in 1940. No Japanese scientist or engineer had the opportunity to read this paper before the
outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941.

AC biasing to hysteresis for noise reduction in magnetic recording
One of the distinguished achievements at RIEC during the World War II time is the invention of the AC biasing
method for magnetic recording by Professor Nagai. The magnetic recording itself is a technique using hysteresis,
but this technique was vital for noise elimination in analogue recording. Professor Iwasaki, who would later
invent perpendicular magnetic recording in the early 1970s, which is currently used in hard-disk digital storage,
was studying in depth the behaviour of hysteresis. He was looking at this magnetic phenomenon from different
angles. (See Figure 3.)

A practical AC biasing method of magnetic recording was also invented in America almost simultaneously, but the
Figure 2. For the fulfilment of mechatronics magnetism was
necessary as a go-between. Science and the application of magnetism
were started before electronics.

Mechatronics
Electronics
Mechanics
Magnetism
Americans were successful in the design of good tape-recorders as a result of the hysteresis motor. After the War,
Japanese engineers found out about the new motor used in American tape recorders, and decided to build their
own hysteresis motor; the key was the magnetic material used for the rotor. A suitable alloy of iron, aluminium
and nickel was eventually developed by a young scientist who had studied at the Science Department of Tohoku
University. The technical issues were how to produce magnetic materials with relatively low coercive force with a
narrow variation in material property. High coercive force does not permit smooth ramping, but too low coercive
force makes the available torque too low. It is interesting to note that Ewings scientific heritage was handed down
from Nagaoka to Kotaro Honda, who made the Science Department of Tohoku University the Japanese Mecca of
metallurgy and permanent-magnet materials.


Figure 3 Principle of perpendicular magnetic recording.

Specialising in gaseous electronics before mechatronics
My personal interest was in mechatronics, but no one was doing research in this area, so for my final-year project I
chose to work in a laboratory of gaseous electronics, which was headed by Professor Hatta, who carried on the
research subjects and style of Professor Watanabe, who had retired the year before I joined. I joined also because I
was impressed by Professor Hattas textbook on gaseous discharge and interested in the possibility of nuclear
fusion, which was expected to be an inexhaustible energy source after the petrol era. In nuclear fusion, plasma
must be contained in a strong magnetic field and heated. My supervisor, Professor Hatta, planned to start with
basic studies using a compact setup and a weak field. My first assignment was to design a set of Helmholtz coils to
produce a uniform magnetic field that could contain the plasma within a glass tube. The coils were installed in a
few months and supplied with a current of several hundred amps. My next assignment was to investigate
theoretically a certain type of low-frequency wave which propagates in plasma and exhibits some strange
characteristics. I was trained to read relevant papers in English and German and papers on theoretical analyses of
waves and statistical approaches to gaseous problems. After my undergraduate studies, I went on to the Masters
course to continue experimental studies of this wave at the laboratory, and also attended several classes offered by
the Physics Department. Through the seminar discussions I came to realise that nuclear fusion technology would
not be realised in my lifetime. At present still, some 40 years later, this technology has not yet reached the
feasibility studies stage at the same time as we have the global warming issue.

My supervisor suggested that I observe the low-frequency wave, also using the Helmholtz coils. However, from
the experiments conducted by my seniors (Master course students in electrical engineering) I found that plasma
displays complicated behaviour even in a weak uniform magnetic field. So I decided instead to investigate the
effect that recombination of electrons and ions at the glass wall would have on the wavelength, in the absence of
any magnetic field. The laboratory was equipped with a glass-blowing shop with several craftsmen, one of whom
fabricated several tapered tubes for my plasma containers. I constructed a measurement setup from glass fibre
cables and mechanical components that I purchased from model-railroad shops. My supervisor instructed me to
write a short paper of the experimental results, which received favourable responses from the US Navy laboratory
and European specialists. I was aware that it was thanks to the well-equipped shops and support facilities
established within the solid tradition of the Department of Electrical Engineering that I was able to carry out a
successful experiment in a relatively short time. The mathematical technique and physics mentality I had learnt for
three years in this laboratory worked usefully in my later career in mechatronics.

Creating a design theory of hysteresis motors
After receiving a Masters degree, however, I decided to work in mechatronics. I chose the TEAC Corporation as
my workplace because I sensed that this tape-recorder manufacturer would grow to become a publicly-quoted
company in the very near future. This was in June 1964, four months before the first Shinkansen ran between
Tokyo and Osaka and the Tokyo Olympic Games were held. When I consulted Professor Iwasaki on the prospects
of TEAC before applying to work there, comparing it with Sony where he had worked earlier when it was just
starting up, he made no comments regarding its future prospects as a company. But I was optimistic. On my
first day at TEAC, I asked the President, Mr.Tani, to assign me a problem that had to be solved urgently. He said
electric motor, in a hesitant manner since my background was mainly in electronic physics and not in motors. I
asked what kind of motor? and hysteresis motor was his answer.
Tani used to be one of the Japanese engineers who burned with enthusiasm about designing their own tape
recorders as good as American ones, but he had not yet completed the design of a reliable motor to drive the tape.
He needed a young man who had studied maths, physics and the essence of electric motors.

In early November that year, TEAC began manufacturing the rather expensive tape recorders that incorporated the
motors I had designed. This tape recorder was targeted at young American soldiers who were stopping over in
Tokyo before being transported to the battlefields of Vietnam. Figure 4 depicts the motor system in a high-class
tape-recorder of that era.

My strategy for designing a two-speed motor (low speed for normal operation and high speed for increased
frequency band) was separating the problem into two items; optimum design of the stators windings and
improvement of the magnetic properties of the rotors key material. I thought that the former could be attained
with the help of one technician but the latter needed the expertise of a metallurgy scientist from a steel
manufacturer. The former problem was to invent a reasonable method to decide on the most suitable number of
turns and wire diameters with minimum torque ripple. I made this a mathematical problem based on alternating
current theory developed by Charles Steinmetz who investigated hysteresis in the area of electric motors. I was
quickly successful in this, using the hysteresis material that was found to be most stable from my past experience.
Two sets of windings are seen clearly in the example shown in Figure 5, but much smaller designs were required
for a consumer tape-recorder. Needless to say, ease of manufacture was required since no automated winding
machines were available at that time.


















































p
f 120
(rpm)
Figure 4. The classic design of a high-class or professional taperecorder employs one hysteresis
motor and two eddy-current motors. If the rotor steel has a negligible coercive intensity like (a),
the AC motor is an eddy-current motor, a type of induction motor that can operate at any speeds
below the synchronous speed, which is the revolving speed of the magnetic field built by the
stator windings and the electric currents flowing in them. See (d). Eddy current is the electric
current induced in the rotor steel. The eddy current produces torque by interaction with the
magnetic field built by the currents supplied from the mains.
When the rotor steel has a low coercive intensity and the hysteresis major loop is close to an
ellipse like (b) the AC motor is a hysteresis synchronous motor, which can revolve at the
synchronous speed irrespective of load torque as explained in (d).
Currently, how to reduce eddy-current and hysteresis in the stator core in a brushless DC
motor for higher efficiency is an important challenge, but these fundamental electromagnetic
phenomena were exploited in the mechatronics system in a classic tape-recorder.


B
H


(a) For an eddy-current motor
(b) For a hysteresis motor
Torque
Revolving
speed
Hysteresis
motor

Eddy-current
motor

(d) Torque vs. speed characteristics of
two types of AC motors.
(c) Two typical types of rotor shape.
Speed is kept
constant in
this torque
range.

Synchronous
Speed



f

frequency
p number of
stators magnetic
poles


A prototyped eddy current motor
using mild steel with negligible
coercive force. This is for giving
tension to the magnetic tape.

Capstan
Guide rollers
Pinch roller
Magnetic head
Reel
Eddy current motor using
mild steel with negligible
coercive force. This is for
giving tension to the
magnetic tape.

Belt
Magnetic tape
Torque
Hysteresis synchronous motor to drive
the flywheel via a belt to produce
constant speeds. This mechanism was
eventually supplanted by a direct drive
using a compact brushless motor with
sophisticated electronics.

Flywheel


The next step was the determination of the optimum magnetic properties. Note that a motor consists of a stator and
a rotor as two main components. Figure 5 shows a type of stator, which is the stationary member composed with a
lamination core and windings.



Figure 5. Windings of two-speed hysteresis motor designed for tape-recorders used in
broadcasting centres. A set of four-pole windings and a set of eight pole windings are
mounted. If the mains frequency is 50Hz, the rotational speed can be switched
between 1500 rpm or 750 rpm. In the current technology, the speed is changed and
controlled by electronics with simpler windings. See Figure 6 which shows the rotor
construction to use with this stator.

The rotor is a rotating member placed in the magnetic field produced by the stator; its key material is the ring alloy
in a hysteresis motor. Figure 6 shows some of the remaining ring alloys, which were called hysteresis rings. At the
same time I carried out some experiments on eddy-current motors, a type of induction motor using steel sheet
usually used for truck bodies, to provide suitable tension to the magnetic tape. I learnt that magnetic properties,
including hysteresis of steel and its alloys, behave in mysterious ways when used in electric motors. Figure 4
includes a photo of a type of eddy-current motor. Two basic types of rotor (inner-rotor and outer-rotor types) are
also indicated in Figure 4; the eddy current motor shown by the photo in this figure employed the outer rotor type.
The stator shown in Figure 5 and the rotor in Figure 6 are for an inner rotor design.




Diameter 100mm
Four-pole
windings
Eight-pole
windings
Figure 6. Hysteresis rings with different magnetic
characteristics using cast steel alloys with aluminium
and nickel were examined. Advancements of other
types of magnets and microelectronics ushered in the
advent of the brushless DC motor.






Theoretical studies and practical education at the Institute of Vocational Training

The next year, when I wanted to talk to someone about my recent job experiences and thoughts, I remembered the
classes given by Professor Naruse. He had already retired from Tohoku University and became the first president
of the newly established IVT (Institute of Vocational Training in Tokyo); I did not anticipate that I would join his
staff several years later. After looking up his home telephone number, I called him, whereupon he invited me to
come to his newly built Japanese-style house. At his house, he listened earnestly to my talk for several hours.
One day several weeks later I received a telephone call from him at my workplace. He said he had sent his car
with his secretary and wanted me to come to his office. I was then living in an apartment close to the company and
was trying to spend as little money as possible in order to save, and as it was during the hot summer months I
happened to be wearing only a shabby under-shirt. After a one hour ride, the car arrived at the Institute and I was
shown to the Principals room. Professor Naruse personally showed me around the workshops where the students
were being given training, and afterwards invited me to a cottage-like Japanese restaurant by a small lake. The
reflected moon on the lake surface seen from the cottage was beautiful. Professor Naruse seemed to be in high
spirits and at one point during the meal asked me, Kenjo-san why dont you come to my college? I thought that
he was asking me to newly enrol as a student, and recall giving a half-baked reply. It was only a few days later
that I learnt from a phone call from my former professor that he wanted me to join as a member of his teaching
staff.

Acquaintance with a mathematician
After I joined the IVT, Professor Naruse encouraged me to do research and obtain a Doctor of Engineering Degree,
referring to the educational system he had seen in Germany. He sometimes talked about how Professor
Barkhausen had praised Yagis talent as an experimentalist. I had known the Barkhausen effect related to magnetic
hysteresis, but I felt little interest then in his work on vacuum tubes. Naruses ambition was to create a university,
starting with a centre of vocational training, imbued with the kind of spirit that he and Yagi had felt at TH Dresden,
and which they had previously introduced at Tohoku University.

I got acquainted with a number of people with unique personalities. I wish to mention two here, whose family
names resemble each other. One is Nagamori, an electric-course student, and the other is Nagakura, a young staff
member teaching mathematics.

Nagakura was not necessarily interested in vocational training or practical technical skills. When I heard him
explain his work aimed at his doctorate on real-number functions, mathematical insights on electrical motors
began bubbling up in my mind. But something else was needed for my insight to be much better. A few years later
I found an old book entitled Theory of Electricity authored by G. Livens at the library of the electrical engineering
department at my Alma Mater. A pair of equations in this monograph connected with the mathematical ideas and a
new theory on electric motors emerged. Poyntings theorem on electro-magnetic energy flow, Livens theory on
electro magnetic force and Teares theory on torque/losses in hysteresis motors were beautifully unified using
Stieltjess integral which I learnt from Nagakura. Note that both Poynting and Livens were trained in mathematical
physics and contributed to electro dynamic theory at Cambridge University in a tradition of mathematical physics
descended from Maxwell.

I dont think that Maxwell took hysteresis into account in his equations before Ewings discovery of this magnetic
phenomenon. However, the physical reason for torque generation due to hysteresis in a certain winding
arrangement that I could understand quickly, qualitatively and intuitively can be explained quantitatively in a
beautiful fashion using Maxwells differential equations and the relationship between the Riemann integral and the
Stieltjes integral. Moreover, Maxwells equations are consistent with Einsteins special theory of relativity, which
is thought of as a very fundamental theory for the physical rules in this universe.

We are usually taught about the hysteresis phenomenon referring to some specific ferromagnetic material, but I
found at that time that a significant mechanism of creation and transfer of mechanical power using a magnetic
field is concealed behind this phenomena. Moreover I realised that by means of my mathematical treatment this
can be connected to the principle of what Steinmetz called a reaction motor. Magnetic fields can be controlled as
we wish by controlling electric current in the windings by means of electronic devices of various sorts. This is
the conceptual basis of my Mechatronics! I showed my notes to Professor Fukushima, whereupon he exclaimed,
What an intriguing theory you have created, Kenjo! I will conduct your doctoral studies!

This theory is not necessarily needed in the practical application of mechatronics, but is helpful for understanding
the basic principles of mechatronics regarding magnetics.

The good start of Nagamori a practical man
When I was about to write a paper on optimum winding designs, the professor in charge of electrical technology
discipline asked me to run a special class (lecture) for ten students who were about to start their final year
programmes. He told me that there was one bright student who could have entered the University of Tokyo. We
decided the subject to be small AC motors I built for tape recorder applications. I gave my first class. When I
terminated my talks all the students but one quietly left the room. The student approached me and said What sort
of motor is this, professor? pointing to another motor I had placed on a side table. This is a German-made motor
called a brushless motor, I replied to the active student, No Japanese manufacturers are yet making this new
design, but this will supplant these AC motors in the near future. This student was none other than Shigenobu
Nagamori. When he was a final year student at a technical high-school in Kyoto, his teacher found the IVT in a
publication by chance and advised him to apply for this unique university, because many students whose scores
were poorer than his were going to universities. Nagamoris dream in going to IVT was in other areas than being a
vocational instructor, which was the usual career for most IVT graduates.

Instead of choosing to become a politician, Nagamoris ambition steered him towards the profession of
engineering and in 1967, joining TEAC as an engineer of precision motors, he set his goals to start his own
high-tech company. Precision motors using magnetic materials with stable characteristics were being
manufactured at various locations in Japan, while intensive research on magnetic recording media was being
conducted in various academic and corporate research centres. Thus the basic infrastructure for the development
of the mechatronics industry was in place, just waiting for a bold entrepreneur to appear.

The Mechatronics era was just around the corner
One day Professor Naruse called me into his office and talked about his philosophical thoughts on mankinds
happiness. It was before I wrote my dissertation, and I do not remember the details exactly. He talked about issues
that went beyond science and technology. Afterwards he asked me what area of research I wanted to pursue. I felt
awkward because I thought that I had already explained my ideas to him. But without hesitation, I replied
mechatronics, the use of electronic circuits to drive/control multiple precision motors, without using mechanical
gears! My idea was that, rather than controlling an entire mechanism by gears, the various parts could be driven
more precisely by using multiple small motors each controlled by an electronic circuit. It was based on the
common wisdom that creation is born by negating the present, and I expected that the great authority on
mechanical gears would laugh or make some joke. Instead, he simply frowned and said nothing! The actual
creation of a new paradigm is never explained away by such simple formulas as breaking the status quo, but
nevertheless it was an important step in my conception of mechatronics.

As I have stated earlier I came up with this word when attending Professor Naruses class in 1960, but this
respected mechanical engineering professor was unable to accept this concept in 1966. The times may have not
been ripe for a word like mechatronics. Yet, the Mechatronics era was just around the corner.

This rapid advance in digital integrated circuits that began in the 1960s worked as the infrastructure foundation for
mechatronics.

From hysteresis to brushless DC motors
The simple but tricky principle of constant speed produced by a hysteresis motor was acceptable for recording and
the reproduction of sounds, but higher quality and frequency independency was required. (The mains frequency is
50Hz in the Eastern area of Japan including the Tokyo area but 60Hz in the Western part of Japan.) Replacement
of hysteresis motors by brushless DC motors was about to begin in record players. The design displayed in the
Osaka Expo in 1970 by Panasonic was symbolic. This used a large brushless DC motor to drive the turntable
without a belt but with sophisticated electronics. Panasonic continued refining this design concept and the example
shown in Figure 7 is a pinnacle of Mechatronics design around 1980; a very simple arrangement of two-phase
windings, rotor magnet and speed sensing printed circuit are integrated. The electronic circuit was still a mixture
of discrete and integrated components.

TEAC designed a VTR system using a hysteresis motor for NHK to use for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
However, it was in 1975 that light-weight VTR machines using a brushless DC motor as a consumer appliance
began to be supplied by Sony, Nippon Victor, Toshiba, etc. Higher accuracy of speed was guaranteed by
sophisticated electronics.

Figure 8 shows how a typical brushless DC motor in the late 1960s and the early 1970s resembled a hysteresis
motor in stator and rotor constructions. An electronic circuit and position sensors are needed for this motor.
Discrete transistors are used in this design, but current ones are operated with dedicated ICs. Another major
difference in the brushless DC motor is seen in the coercive force of the magnet used for the rotor. Figure 9
explains the difference in the use of magnetic characteristics of a permanent-magnet material.





















Figure 7. (a) Cutaway-view of a brushless DC motor made by Panasonic in the early 1980s for direct drive
of the turntable of a record player, (b) pole arrangement of the rotor magnet and sensor printed circuit for
speed detection, (c) deconstructed major elements.



Figure 8. An example of early brushless DC motor using an
Alnico magnet for its rotor and Hall elements as the position
sensor. Motor construction is basically the same as a hysteresis
motor. See Figures 5 and 6.















































Figure 9. In the case of brushless DC motors, the rotor material is magnetised by an external strong field
intensity. When it is removed the operating point (magnetisation state o) travels along . This
operating point varies in a range shown by red region when operated as a brushless motor. The
polarisation never alters unlike the case of a hysteresis motor.
N
S
N
S
N
S
N
S
In a hysteresis motor, magnetic poles are not necessarily fixed to the magnetic material; from start to
synchronism the magnetic poles on the rotor slide on the rotor surface due to a low coercive force. When
the rotor reaches the synchronous speed, which is the revolving speed of the stator magnetic poles
determined by the windings and electric current supplied by the mains, the rotors poles are fixed to the
materials. This automatic mechanism does not need a complicated power electronics system.

N
S
N
N
S S
N
S
(a) Hysteresis motor. Rotors
steel is magnetised by the
revolving magnetic field built by
the current flowing in the stator
windings. When rotors speed is
lower than the revolving field an
angle appears between the stators
magnetic poles and rotors
polarisation. Because of a low
coercive intensity the magnetic
state on the rotor traces a hysteresis
major loop, i.e. the magnetic state
alters polarities.

(b) Brushless DC
motor. Early brushless
DC motor used a solid
Alnico magnet, which is
strongly magnetised.
Due to a high coercive
intensity the polarities are
not affected by the
stators field.

(c) SPM (Surface
permanent magnet) type
using segment magnets.
A typical type for current
brushless DC motor for
small and medium sizes.

(d) IPM (Interior
permanent magnet) type,
another typical type of
brushless DC motors for
power applications.

N
S
N S
N S
S
N
When the stators number of
revolving magnetic poles is eight,
the rotor is magnetised in eight
poles and the motor speed reduced
by a factor 2. See Figure 5.
B
H

O

High coercive
intensity
Permeance line
determined by
number of magnetic
poles, airgap length,
magnet width, etc
When magnetising current is turned off,
magnetic state travels along this
demagnetisation line.
By an external magnetising
current the materials B/H
state is brought up to here,
and travels towards
when the current is turned
off.

In a brushless DC motor, the rotors magnetic
material must have a large coercive force, i.e. a
permanent magnet material.
Advent of the Mechatronics Age Epoch making 1972
I would say that the year 1972 was the dawn of Mechatronics. In that year an eight-bit microprocessor was
developed by Intel Corporation, following their four-bit processors. This ushered in the fully-fledged electronics
and mechatronics era. Masatoshi Shima, who also studied chemistry at Tohoku University, played an important
role in the early stages of this drama, where he used his extraordinary memory of the fine IC chemical process
masks to design the chip layout. But such individual feats of memory were soon supplanted by mainframe
computers, which allowed the design of the 16-bit microprocessor and triggered the Personal Computer Era.
Yaskawa Electric, which is mentioned at the beginning of this article, was a company that concentrated its
resources in the electronic control of precision DC motors but was about to expand their control technology for
AC induction motors. They coined the word Mecha-tronics and registered it as their trademark in 1972. (The
hyphenated word struck me as unnatural, and official records of the time show that its application area was
restricted to products falling under non-motor and non-electronic equipment - see Figure 10. It is important to note
that they were unable to apply non-hyphenated Mechatronics as a trademark for the products which fall in the
present-day category of mechatronics since the mechatronics Japanese word was popular in Japan as a word for
machinery controlled by electronics. They may have come to find it useless to register Mecha-tronics as a
trademark restricted to mechanical products only; therefore when the time came to apply for extension of the
trademark registration ten years later, the company decided not to do so, but continued to use Mechatronics and its
katakana as the company slogan, paving the way for its broad acceptance among engineering circles.

It was in 1973 that Nagamori started Nihon Densan (which later became NIDEC), but he started with conventional
AC motors based on my design theory and technique. This was a cautious start but he thereby got good chances to
convert to brushless DC motors effectively. In The Challenging Road, he declared his outlook to be the surging
passion, boiling enthusiasm and tenacious persistence, and also stated: In 1973 when I built this company I
changed my name to Mr. Dream Dreamer.
We saw a fully-fledged mechatronics era when digital electronics ICs came to be used in large quantities and
brushless DC motors came to be used in various applications.

Figure 10 Mecha-tronics and its katakana used to be Yaskawa Electric trademarks.




A Japanese journal called Mechatronics had been founded in 1976; the February 2009 issue marked its 400th
issue. This had the effect of popularising the term mechatronics in Japan, just as the American magazine
Electronics had made the word electronics popular. When the time came for Yaskawa to apply for extension of
the trademark registration ten years later, the company decided not to do so, although it continued to use it as the
company slogan.



The engine that propelled Mechatronics forward in the I T and business machine area
Early large-sized magnetic hard disks or data storage in mainframe computers were driven by AC reluctance
motors. This technology was adopted for eight-inch floppy disk drives from the late 1970s for one decade. The
reluctance motor is a self-start synchronous motor though its construction is similar to a normal induction motor -
a type of asynchronous motor. This sort of motor was inferior to the hysteresis motor in multi-speed characteristics,
but suffices as a single speed operation fed from the mains. For downsizing personal computers, however,
replacement of AC motors with brushless DC motors using permanent magnets was indispensable. It was in the
1980s that a drastic increase of brushless DC motors was seen in the area of hard disks for personal computers.
Figure 11 is a brushless DC motor designed for an 8-inch HDD in 1981. Nagamori, ten years after his start as an
entrepreneur, decided to enlarge his NIDEC into this area.

Progress in permanent magnets and integrated circuits over the past thirty years resulted in a big change in the
design of precision motors; small-sized, light-weight design technologies broke the conventional theory developed
for factory power motors. Ferrite magnets were used in the early era as seen in the design shown in Figure 7(c),
but samarium cobalt began to be adopted for smaller motors for high-end products around 1985. In due course,
more powerful but lower-cost neodymium magnet has supplanted samarium cobalt. By 1985 NIDEC became the
worlds top supplier of HDD spindle motors. Position sensors using the Hall effect were supplanted by electronic
artificial intelligence incorporated in a microprocessor or dedicated integrate circuit.

In the early 1990s fluid dynamic bearings were available for small HDD spindle motors but it was in 1997 that
ball bearings began to be replaced with the new bearings for high accuracy revolutions. These were for
high-density memory record and access. One such design is as seen in Figure 12, which employs an outer-rotor
construction. Note that brushless HDD motors are manufactured in a clean room just as with semiconductor
devices (see Figure 13).



Figure 11 A brushless DC motor manufactured by NIDEC in 1981for an 8-inch hard disk drive.

Mechatronics, as a new paradigm, was fulfilled by the establishment of a new industry, set up by enthusiastic
young men educated at a technical institute - IVT - the only university which came under the Ministry of Labour
rather than the Japanese Ministry of Education, that emphasised practical learning and manufacture based on short
delivery times. A large per cent of business machines used in the world are today operating with precision motors
supplied by NIDEC. Thus the worlds economic activities are underpinned by mechatronics technology.

The brushless DC motor, which began as a type of precision small electric motor, was developed even for power
applications. Not only hybrid electric vehicles, but also some of the commuter trains are driven by brushless DC
motors. A current small-sized, high-power and high efficiency design is shown in Figure 14, which was designed
for the F5B radio control racing glider.


















Figure 12. Brushless DC motors for HDD spindle drives;
position sensing is implemented by sophisticated ICs sensing
the current and voltage waveforms. Fluid dynamic bearings are
used for high-density memory record and access.

My activity in Pedagogic work
After my doctoral work, I produced a number of pedagogic materials for controlling electromagnetic fields using
solid-state devices with the backgrounds stated above, and wrote several theoretical papers and a number of
practical articles and books in Japanese based on my research results in my IVT years. Some 50 articles are
included for the MECHATRONICS magazine under the title Mechatronics Controls using Microprocessors,
which must have contributed to the progress in the use of electronic-based circuits or microprocessors for the
control of precision motors. On the other hand, the materials I produced for the overseas courses at IVT were part
of the sources for monographs I wrote to be published by Oxford University Press. I also contributed several
papers for IEEE Transactions on Education in co-authorship with one of my students.

Yagis accomplishment in the Physics Area

I have tried to show above that mechatronics came about not only from the integration of mechanics and
electronics, but also magnetics as well, and that it was a paradigm that came from synthesizing not just two but
three disciplines. This may be a story of a branch of the tree whose trunk is rooted to Ewing, Nagaoka, Honda and
Yagi. Another example of paradigm-building based on the triplet model is found in modern physics, specifically
the basic theoretical advances in particle physics that can even explain why the Universe can exist! It is in this
connection that Hidetsugu Yagi played a crucial role in bringing up, and bringing together, some of the more
important Japanese scientific talents. This will be helpful for understanding the characteristics of Japanese
sleeve engraved with herring-bone
grooves on the inner surface
magnet
iron
winding
aluminium base
thrust bush with spiral
grooves on top surface
rotor shaft
armature core
bearing housing
lead wires
s
rotor (disk hub)

lubricant
one of the three thin lubricant
circulation grooves engraved
at 120-degree intervals
spiral grooves
engraved on
bottom end of
the sleeve


technology in contrast with the progress of frontier physics, which have the same personal roots.




Figure 13. NIDECs Nagano Technical Centre and its clean
room. Over 70% of the worlds brushless motors for hard disks
are supplied by NIDEC.

Quantum physics brought by Dirac, Heisenberg and Nishina
Two gifted students, Hideki Yukawa and Shinichiro Tomonaga, were studying physics in Kyoto University when
quantum physics made big progress due to Heisenberg and Shrdinger around 1926 in Europe. Yoshio Nishina,
one of the students of Nagaoka, who had studied in Cambridge, Gttingen, Copenhagen and Paris, had brought
back to Japan in 1928 the latest knowledge on advanced physics. When Dirac and Heisenberg visited Kyoto
University in 1929 accepting the request by Dr. Nishina, Yukawa sensed that there was an inferiority complex
among the Japanese professors, even though they claimed to be their academic equals. He then decided to stay in
Japan and not go abroad to pursue work in physics. Meanwhile, Tomonaga learnt the essence of quantum physics
from them on this occasion. When in 1931, Nishina himself gave a special lecture at Kyoto University for one
month he had noted these two when they were research assistants there. Tomonaga was subsequently hired by
Nishina at his Riken laboratory in Tokyo, where he was soon productive writing papers. Yukawa was promoted to
lecturer at Kyoto University but his keen interest in quantum physics was underappreciated by his superior, who
specialised in the theory of relativity.



Figure 14 Brushless DC motor together with drive/control circuit built
by NIDEC Motor Engineering Research Laboratory for F5B
radio-controlled racing gliders.

The key role of Yagi at Osaka I mperial University
The Government decided to establish the eighth Imperial University in Osaka in 1931 following the sixth in Seoul
(1924) and the seventh in Taipei (1928). Nagaoka was appointed as its first president and requested Yagi to create
and head its physics department while keeping his position at Tohoku Imperial University, hoping that this
selection would lead to practical or useful physics. Ironically, this resulted in an epoch-making paradigm creation
in pure physics. In March 1933 a young associate professor at Tohoku University notified Yagi of the existence of
his brother Hideki Yukawa. He called on Yagi in April when an annual convention on mathematical physics was
held at Tohoku University. Yagi explained to the young scholar his aspiration for mathematical physics. Yagi felt
ambition hidden in Yukawas apparent shyness with his quiet voice, and decided to hire him at once.
The day before his presentation at Tohoku University Yukawa had a memorable discussion with Tomonaga as they
strolled the campus grounds. They stopped to scratch equations on the ground with a wooden branch concerning
the (strong) nuclear force, which acts between a proton and a neutron to hold the nucleus together. Existence of the
neutron had been verified by James Chadwick at the University of Liverpool only the previous year. Tomonaga
was the only person with whom Yukawa could discuss the latest physical issues in Japan. According to the
quantum theory, a field can be accommodated by one quantum (elementary particle) or more quanta. If an electron
is a go-between quantum for the field that attracts a proton and proton, the distance which the force affects is too
large. This was the result from Yukawas calculation. He explained to Tomonaga that a mysterious particle
(quantum) must exist for a shorter distance field but he had not yet been successful in explaining its spin quantum
number. This discussion was the start of elementary particle physics. History tells us that innovations or creations
took place frequently at a certain town at a certain age. A creative atmosphere prevailed over the campus of
Tohoku University when Yagi was a middle-aged professor and Sendai was known as the capital in a green forest.

Prediction of the meson by Yukawa
One day in 1934 before departing for Europe to attend an international conference on physics in London and other
purposes, Yagi called Yukawa to his office at Osaka University and complained about the fact that Yukawa had not
yet published a single research paper for five years since graduating. He was actually working on the nuclear
force, triggered by Fermis paper written in Italian, but he must have been seriously hurt. He struggled to create an
innovative theory. Eventually he was inspired by an idea and completed his first paper when Yagi was returning
from the six-month journey. It was in 1935 that this was published and was dispatched to libraries at universities
and laboratories around the world, in which he hypothesized the existence of a new particle with a mass about 200
times that of the electron which would accurately account for the nuclear force. However, Japanese academic
journals were not taken seriously at that time and the article went into storage before it came to the notice of any
physicist. The next year, the American experimental physicists, Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer, published
their discovery of what seemed to be a new particle, and Yukawa, feeling confident that this provided experimental
evidence for his prediction, sent a letter entitled A consistent theory of the nuclear force and the -disintegration
to the editor of Nature, but the British publisher rejected it saying that there was no experimental evidence.
Yukawas theory began to be noticed by the physics community in the West around 1937, and was eventually
accepted as the standard theory of nuclear forces. The particle discovered by Anderson, now called the muon, did
have a mass 207 times that of the electron, but was found not to be the particle predicted by Yukawa. Yukawa had
predicted in 1935 what is today called a meson.

Outbreak of World War I I and Yagis misfortune
In 1939 Yukawa was invited to attend the Solvay Conferences on Physics to discuss the theme of the meson. When
Yukawa arrived in Naples on 2 August he knew that the leading physicists conference would not be held because
the political tension was rising quickly in Europe. He met Tomonaga in Berlin, who had been collaborating with
Heisenberg at Leipzig University since 1937. The boat that carried Yukawa from Japan was chartered for the
Japanese to evacuate from Hamburg. When the boat arrived in the port of Bergen in Norway, Hitlers troops
invaded Poland - the outbreak of World War II. Yukawa landed at New York but Tomonaga went to Panama to
cross the Canal avoiding the USA. Yukawa visited the Institute for Advanced Study to meet Albert Einstein when
he had just signed a letter to be sent to President Roosevelt to urge the atomic bomb project. Who could then have
anticipated that six years later, as a result of the Manhattan Project, the first atomic bomb would be dropped on the
town of Hiroshima guided by a small antenna Yagi had invented?

Yagi was very disappointed when he heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbour, which signified the outbreak
of the Pacific War. Early in the War, when the Japanese Army occupied Singapore in 1942, they found the Yagi
antenna used at the British bases for their radar technology to detect enemy planes. Although Yagi had filed a
Japanese patent for his invention 16 years earlier, it had been virtually ignored in Japan, and the fact that the
enemy was using technology developed by a Japanese scientist shook the Japanese military. This resulted in Yagi
gaining a measure of respect from the Japanese military.

Here it should be noted that when General Yuji Ito, who also studied at Barkhausens institute by Yagis
recommendation, visited Germany in the Spring of 1941 to investigate German radar technology, ironically the
German warship Bismarck was traced by radar and sunk by British warships (27 May 1941). Ito found an article
in his hotel, which Lord Beaverbrook, then Minister of Supply in Winston Churchills Cabinet, wrote in the June
1941 issue of Nature about the UK radar system and sent it together with the report to the Navy Technical
Laboratory. His report was not taken seriously.

Towards the end of the war, Yagi was appointed the Director of the Technology Agency; one programme which he
headed in this capacity involved a direct attack on mainland United States using balloon bombs launched from a
beach on Japans east coast. Out of 9300 balloons launched, it is thought that about one-tenth reached the U.S.
Although ineffectual as a weapon, these attacks did arouse concerns among the American defence authorities, who
censored any news of the bombs until six deaths occurred in Oregon.

Meeting of leading engineers of the two nations
Yagis frustration with the military government increased and he explicitly opposed the kamikaze attacks with the
sacrifice of young pilots. After a six-month stay as the Director of the Technology Agency he resigned from the
post on 22 May 1945. Three days later Yagis house in Tokyo was burnt down by Allied bombing. After a few
moves, a former student named Yamamoto offered him a mud storehouse to live in that had survived the
incendiary bombs. When Yagi returned to the Higher Technical School from abroad in 1916, Yamamoto was
motivated strongly by his words: If you are about to start a new business it must be in wireless technology. After
graduation Yamamoto started his own company to produce generators for the power supply of wireless equipment.
During the War, his company expanded rapidly due to wartime demand to supply generators for radio equipment
for fighter planes for the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy, coming to employ some 5000 workers, some of
whom were students of a girls high school mobilised under wartime martial law.

Japan lost the war completely in the summer of 1945. During the confusion in Japans immediate post-war years,
Yamamoto had to let go of the majority of the company employees, but soon reorganised and returned to
manufacturing products for peacetime applications. For some time, his company produced small electric motors
for agricultural equipment, but later shifted to DC motors and stepping motors for numerically controlled (NC)
machine tools and computers.

About a month after Japans defeat, Yagi was visited by Dr. Karl T. Compton and other members of the US
Scientific Intelligence Mission at his storehouse home. Compton was President of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) and elder brother of Arthur Holly Compton, the discoverer of the Compton effect (1923), and
had arrived in Japan with General MacArthur as a member of the Scientific Intelligence Mission, whose purpose
was to investigate scientific and technological advances in Japan, especially regarding weaponry. The two men
had become acquainted much earlier when Yagi had visited the USA. It is noteworthy that when a powerful
magnetron was invented at Birmingham University in 1940, the British Government found it such an important
technology that they decided to transfer this technology to the United States for a joint project to obtain a key
technical advantage towards winning the war. The centre of development was MIT, which became the technical
development centre for the war with Japan, hiring thousands of technicians and engineers. It is said that the
Germans knew of the cavity magnetron, but they overlooked its importance as a short-wave generator while the
Anglo-American cooperation was aimed at quantity production.

According to Hiroshi Matsuo, who has written a biography of Yagi, the exchange that took place between the two
may have been something like what follows.

Yagi, who was then 59-years old, greeted Compton saying, I did not expect to see you in Japan. If not for this
unfortunate war, I would not have had the opportunity to visit Japan. replied Compton and continued, I had
imagined that you would be rich and living in a large house from royalties of the patent on the Yagi antenna. Yagi
laughed and said, That patent expired before its usefulness was ever recognised in Japan. In fact, Yagi had filed
an extension of the patent, which ironically had been rejected by a former student of his at the Japanese Patent
Office.

From Yagi, Dr. Compton learnt of Japans delay in developing technology. The meeting of the two leading
science/technology educators in their respective countries, in their contrasting situations, was symbolic of the
differences between Japan and the Allied countries in their programmes for building wartime technologies. Early
in the war, the British had channeled vast financial and human resources into building radar systems, and pressed
the Americans as well to undertake a similar programme. The superior radar systems of the Allies were a decisive
factor in determining the wars outcome, in Europe and in the Pacific. The Manhattan Project, which began with
an urgent letter by Einstein and other leading physicists to President Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb, also
was an extraordinary national effort that brought together the best scientific and engineering minds in the country.
In contrast, in Japan the Imperial Navy and Army rejected any government interference and constantly competed
for political influence, jealously guarding their own weapons technology programmes using entirely different
drawing methods and terminologies for design and manufacture.

Hero and war criminal
In 1947, Yukawas meson was detected by a measurement by the British physicist Cecil Powell. As a result
Yukawa won the 1949 Nobel Prize and Powell the next year. When Yukawa became a hero in a Japan which was
occupied by the Allies, Yagi was still treated as a war criminal being prohibited from holding an official post
because of his former position as the Director of the Technology Agency. Nobody said that Yagi had played an
important role in Yukawas achievement and Yukawa himself wouldnt express his thanks to Yagi. He said nothing,
either. After his honour was restored the prominent engineer became an upper house MP for three years as a
right-wing socialist, but he was not very successful as a politician. Matsuo, after detailed investigations with
interviews with more than one hundred people and documents, concluded that Yagis most important
accomplishment was providing Yukawa with an environment to be the first Japanese Nobel Laureate. When seen
from a different angle, this was the start of elementary particle physics. Yagi passed away in 1976.

Post World War II Progress of electronics and mechatronics
The rapid technological progress that took place following Japans defeat occurred largely because Japanese
policy-makers and industrialists were able to recognise and learn from these wartime failures. Thus, Japan was
able to move to the forefront of solid-state electronics at a relatively early stage. As stated earlier Professor
Yasushi Watanabe played a key role in this effort.

The government coordinated promotion of industry. Numerical control based on transistor and computer
technology was one such chosen area and, in the mid-1950s, Yamamotos company Sanyo Denki began focusing
its resources into developing servomotors for NC applications. Later, in the early 1970s, they developed stepping
motors which were supplied to IBM for use in computer peripherals.

The seeds of Mechatronics in the UK opened their blossoms in J apan
The earliest stepping motors were invented in 1919 and 1920 in Britain: the first by a civil engineer in Aberdeen,
and the other by two men in Newcastle upon Tyne. These inventors most likely received no royalties since there
were no solid-state devices to operate the devices in this era. A type of motor that combined the former invention
with a strong permanent magnet was invented in 1952 in America; this came to be known as the Slo-syn type of
stepping motor which was used in computer peripheral equipment. In 1957 an article titled The Power Stepping
Motor A New Digital Actuator appeared in an American engineering journal, and this heralded the advent of the
NC age. To produce a complicated machine shape, three stepping motors were driven by electronic gas tubes
controlled by punched paper tape produced by a computer. This article drew the attention of MITI (the Japanese
Ministry of International Trade and Industry) officials and company executives in Japan, who saw clearly that the
gas tubes would soon be supplanted by transistors. Very soon afterwards, the Electro-Technical Laboratory
initiated an intense R&D programme to develop NC technology.

Fanuc, which would later emerge as the worlds top manufacturer of numerically controlled machinery, saw its
beginnings as a division of Fujitsu and developed a powerful stepping motor based on the construction of the said
1920 invention in Britain.

Thus we can see two streams of mechatronics: numerical control and magnetic recording. The former started
under Government guidance, but the latter took place under entirely private initiative as seen in the TEAC and
NIDEC cases. Both technologies underpin a diversity of human activities today. For example, the word
micromechatronics is used in the context of magnetic recording systems with no mechanical gears, as in Joint
Conference on Micromechatronics for Information and Precision Equipment. This demonstrates that magnetic
recording and mechatronics are closely linked together. The amount of information created in computers and
stored in them and other home appliances is still expanding at an extraordinary speed. There are estimates that
1000 exabytes (10
18
bytes) of data will be created and replicated worldwide in 2010, and billions of hard disk
drives are needed to provide the vast bulk of this online data storage. Alongside this data storage technology is
seen a new discipline of Spintronics, exploiting quantum properties of electron spin for one bit of data, falling
under the category of micromechatronics.


Physics for new eras for reasoning existence of the Universe

Picking up on our earlier thread on physics, researchers were making steady progress even as Japanese society was
undergoing extreme wartime stresses. Tomonaga participated in a wartime weapons research programme, where
he successfully determined the electromagnetic oscillation mechanism in the split-anode magnetron at the Naval
Technical Research Department, to develop a technology to destroy American bomber planes using
electromagnetic beams. (He was also improving the transmission efficiency of electromagnetic waves generated
by a magnetron, inspired by Heisenbergs paper brought in a U-boat from Germany.The split-anode magnetron
was invented by Kinjiro Okabe at Tohoku University in 1926 and is now used in microwave ovens all over the
world. The Director of the Naval Technical Research Department was Yasushi Watanabe, who is mentioned
earlier.

Tomonaga developed a quantum field theory based on Diracs many-time theory and taking into account Einsteins
theory of relativity. In his paper The Radiation Theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger, and Feynman, (Physical
Review 75, 486(1949)), Freeman Dyson states: All the papers of Professor Tomonaga and his associates which
have yet been published were completed before the end of 1946. The isolation of these Japanese workers has
undoubtedly constituted a serious loss to theoretical physics. It was in 1947 that Tomonaga presented his
mathematical technique of renormalisation to resolve problems in quantum electrodynamics (QED) in which
infinite quantities resulted. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this theory, along with Julian
Schwinger and Richard Feynman. Regrettably Dysons work did not win him the Nobel Prize even though he
played an important role in clarifying the relationships among the theories of the three physicists.

Yukawa and some other physicists founded the Japanese journal Progress of Theoretical Physics in 1946. This
English-language journal came to be a treasure trove for seeking new subjects for research.
The work of the three 2008 Nobel Laureates in Physics - Nambu, Kobayashi and Maskawa on the violation of
CP symmetry follows in the footsteps of Yukawa and Tomonaga.
Physicists know that besides matter there is antimatter. The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both,
but the universe of today appears to be dominated by matter. CP symmetry means that the laws of physics would
be the same if right and left were switched (parity reversal) and particles were switched with anti-particles
(charge) at the same time. The dominance of matter in our universe means that this CP symmetry has been
violated. Nambus contribution in this area was very important.
In the war time, Nambu participated in Japanese radar research as a young military general and got acquainted
with Okabe. It was in the late 1950s at the University of Chicago that Professor Nambu got an idea about the
spontaneous broken symmetry from the theory of superconduction. By 1964 it had come to be known that protons,
neutrons and other subatomic particles are made up of still smaller particles called quarks. The quark was
postulated independently by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, who postulated three flavours: up, down
and strange. The name quark was taken from the phrase Three quarks for Muster Mark! in Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce, according to Gell-Man, who states that the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in
nature. However, it was in 1973 that Kobayashi and Maskawa presented a more complete triplet theory in
Progress of Theoretical Physics. They expanded Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbos two-generation model of quark
mixing to a three generation model and indicated the possibility of the violation of CP symmetry. This was a
prediction of six flavours grouped into three generations, as well. The charm quark was discovered in 1974 and
the bottom quark in 1977. But it was in 1994 that the heaviest top quark was eventually discovered.
To compete with SLAC, the linear accelerator installed in Stanford University, the Japanese Government renewed
an existing accelerator to verify the Kobayashi-Maskawa theory successfully in 2001. This is a huge
electrodynamics machine incorporating hundreds of finely-controlled electro magnets as heavy as a warship. This
project is a symbolic example of indispensable competition and international cooperation for a new paradigm, in
this case clarification of the existence of the Universe by the violation of CP symmetry.
As seen in this case as well, the creation of new concepts or paradigms can arise from an in-depth consideration of
triplets. A similarity to the three elementary colours (R, G, B) was employed also by Nambu successfully to
explain the characteristics of the symmetry/asymmetry characteristics of the wave equations for the three
generations.

The new challenge for mechatronics

The three Japanese 2008 Nobel Prize Winners in Physics proposed mathematical constructions over 30 years ago
to explain how the Universe can exist at all. We are, however, today confronted with the question of whether our
industrial civilisation can continue to exist into the future.

Poison of artefact
I recall Professor Naruses melancholy, which he voiced in 1943 in a dialogue with Riichi Yokomitsu, which was
arranged by a popular science magazine. Yokomitsu was a famous writer who was then writing a novel about two
Japanese couples staying in Europe before the outbreak of World War II, based on the general theme of the
tensions between West and East. In February 1936, the engineering professor and the novelist boarded the same
boat from Yokohama to Marseille, the former on a fact-finding tour on the state of technology in Europe and the
latter to cover the Berlin Olympics as a journalist for a newspaper. Although Yokomitsu admired the
accomplishments of European culture and civilisation, he came to feel a fundamental estrangement to the West.
After returning to Japan, he urged Japanese writers to confront and overcome science, by which he meant that
writers must learn from the precise observational and analytical methods of science but must exceed scientists in
accurately describing the human situation. During the war years, he became increasingly nationalist and, along
with other literary figures, started the Literary Home Front Movement (bungei jugo undo) in support of Japans
war efforts. Unlike Yokomitsu, Naruse was a technologist who had deep faith in the material progress that
technology promised. He stayed in Europe for two years and was greatly impressed by the scientific and
technological achievements he encountered wherever he visited. This put him in a rather depressed mood, thinking
that Japan would never be able to catch up, but triggered his soul-searching for how Japan could equal and rival
the material civilisation achieved by the West. Eventually he came to believe that Japan had to develop its own
indigenous form of technology, which was to be based on traditional craftsmanship based on the long transmission
of lineages in Japan, the death-defying physical courage exemplified by the Japanese samurai (or male), the virtue
manifested by Japanese women, and finally by the national spiritual culture, the national essence or kokutai, the
dogma which asserted the divine lineage of the Japanese emperor and superior spirituality of the Japanese
nation-race, and dominated during the years of Japans militarist expansionist policies. In spite of his faith in
technology, Naruse viewed it as a necessary evil, a strong drug whose poison must be neutralised through the
spiritual cultivation of those practising technology, such that the ancient sword craftsman had undertaken. In the
magazine interview mentioned above, Naruse had commented that scientists and technologists must undergo
spiritual purification to neutralise the poison of science and technology.

After Japan's defeat, Naruse no longer openly expressed his nationalist-spiritualist sentiments, but several decades
later, when he was the Principal of the Institute of Vocational Training, after talking about the bright future
resulting from industrial products, he would sometimes voice his concerns that there was no effective means to
neutralise this poison, although none of us really took it seriously. In retrospect, it is clear that Naruse was not
thinking specifically of environmental issues, but rather had a more general concern that the material culture of
technology could destroy civilisation and human culture if spiritual development did not take place at the same
time. While Naruse was unable to arrive at a specific remedy in regard to this question, much later, in the early
1990s Professor H. Yoshikawa at the University of Tokyo argued that present day evils, such as the worlds
population explosion and global environmental destruction, were the result of traditional engineering disciplines
each pursuing local, isolated solutions under the assumption of an unlimited field and resources. He felt that to
address such global problems, it was necessary to establish a field to study the overall interactions resulting from
the creation of artefacts in a limited field, calling it artefact engineering.


Technology to save Earth rather than the science for existence of the universe
Technology can be blamed for producing weapons of mass destruction, which certainly constitute a major threat to
our continued survival as a species, but we have come to realise that even technology used for peaceful aims can
lead to irreversible degradation of the earths environment. During the past century, human beings have become
accustomed to expending increasing amounts of energy, extracting ever more resources and producing a multitude
of goods. Every day, people drive tens of millions of automobiles around the world, and the amount of CO2
emitted from their internal combustion engines has become unacceptable from the standpoint of global warming.
To curb global warming to a truly acceptable level, we will need to evolve sustainable transportation modalities.
The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) embodies the latest advances in mechatronics but still represents only a
temporary solution. In a future scenario where automobiles still play a major transport role, high-power electric
motors will increasingly replace energy-consuming reciprocating engines, and perhaps the regional movements of
tens of millions of cars will come to be supervised by thousands of cloud computers assisted by magnetic storage
technology.

For such a future scenario to become a reality, however, mechatronics engineers must pull together, boldly
confront the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future. The development of an integrated
mechatronics may require an entirely new paradigm, but we must have a clear vision that can guide us towards the
right track in the technology road ahead. Even more passion and wisdom will be required than is exerted for
clarification of the existence of the universe aimed at a Nobel Prize.

Mechatronics has been a long and exciting journey. Who will now forge a new coin and move the technology
further forward?

Professor Takashi Kenjo, D.Eng, Director Emeritus, Nidec Motor Engineering Research Laboratory

The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable help of Ryu Takeguchi, Kimihiko Hjota, and Gen Kimura. Their
special thanks are extended to historian Hiroshi Matsuo, who gave them encouraging comments and permission to
cite his masterpiece A man who brought up an electronic nation Hidetsugu Yagi and other innovators.

References (major IEEE papers by Professor Takashi Kenjo)
1. A unique desk-top electrical machinery lab for the mechatronics age, IEEE, 1997.
2. In-depth learning of cogging/detenting torque through experiments and simulations, IEEE, 1998.
3. Distant learning applied to a small-motor laboratory - Insight into the stepping motor, IEEE, 1999.
4. Developing educational software for mechatronics simulation, IEEE, 2001.
5. Remote laboratory for a brushless DC motor, IEEE, 2001.
6. Developing an educational simulation program for the PM stepping motor, IEEE, 2002.
7. DVTS-based remote laboratory across the Pacific over the gigabit network, IEEE, 2002.
8. A comparative study of turning and stationary groove journal bearings for HDD spindle motors under transient contact conditions,
IEEE, 2007.
9. An Integrated system modeling and analysis of HDD spindle motors, IEEE, 2009.


OUP Technical books
1. Stepping motors and their microprocessor controls, First edition, 1984
2. Permanent-magnet and brushless DC servomotors, 1985
3. Electric motors and their controls An introduction, 1991
4. An introduction to ultrasonic motors, 1993
5. Stepping motors and their microprocessor controls, Second edition, 1994
6. Power electronics for the microprocessor age, 1994

Magna Physics technical book
1. Brushless motors, 2003

Illustrations and pictures
Figure 1. Hysteresis and how to use its characteristics in a motor and for magnetic recording. The relation
between magnetic flux density B and field intensity H displays non-linear behaviour. This can
produce rotational torque in a construction as an electric motor, but can also be used for signal
recording, which is information storage in current terminology.
Figure 2. For the fulfilment of mechatronics magnetism was necessary as a go-between. Science and the
application of magnetism were started before electronics.
Figure 3. Principle of perpendicular magnetic recording.
Figure 4. The classic design of a high-class or professional tape-recorder employs one hysteresis motor and
two eddy-current motors. If the rotor steel has a negligible coercive intensity like (a), the AC
motor is an eddy-current motor, a type of induction motor that can operate at any speeds below the
synchronous speed, which is the revolving speed of the magnetic field built by the stator windings
and the electric currents flowing in them. See (d). Eddy current is the electric current induced in
the rotor steel. The eddy current produces torque by interaction with the magnetic field built by the
currents supplied from the mains. When the rotor steel has a low coercive intensity the AC motor is
a hysteresis synchronous motor, which can revolve at the synchronous speed irrespective of load
torque as explained in (d). Currently, how to reduce eddy-current and hysteresis in the stator core in
a brushless DC motor for higher efficiency is an important challenge, but these fundamental
electromagnetic phenomena were exploited in the mechatronics system in a classic tape-recorder.
Figure 5. Windings of two-speed hysteresis motor. A set of four-pole windings and a set of eight pole
windings are mounted. If the mains frequency is 50Hz, the rotational speed can be switched
between 1500 rpm or 750 rpm. In the current technology, the speed is changed and controlled by
electronics with simpler windings. See Figure 6 which shows the rotor construction to use with this
stator.
Figure 6. Hysteresis rings with different magnetic characteristics using cast steel alloys with aluminium and
nickel were examined. Advancements of other types of magnets and microelectronics ushered in
the advent of the brushless DC motor.
Figure 7. (a) Cutaway-view of a brushless DC motor made by Panasonic in the early 1980s for direct drive of
the turntable of a record player, (b) pole arrangement of the rotor magnet and sensor printed circuit
for speed detection, (c) deconstructed major elements.
Figure 8. An example of early brushless DC motor using an Alnico magnet for its rotor and Hall elements as
the position sensor. Motor construction is basically the same as a hysteresis motor. See Figures 5
and 6.
Figure 9. In the case of brushless DC motor, the rotor material is magnetised by an external strong field
intensity. When it is removed the operating point (magnetisation state o) travels along . This
operating point varies in a range shown by red region when operated as a brushless motor. The
polarisation never alters unlike the case of hysteresis motor.
Figure 10. Mecha-tronics and its katakana used to be Yaskawa Electric trademarks.
Figure 11. A brushless DC motor manufactured by NIDEC in 1981for an 8-inch hard disk drive.
Figure 12. Brushless DC motors for HDD spindle drives; position sensing is implemented by sophisticated
ICs sensing the current and voltage waveforms. Use of fluid dynamic bearings were for
high-density memory record and access.
Figure 13. NIDECs Nagano Technical Centre and its clean room. Over 70% of the worlds brushless motors
for hard disks are supplied by NIDEC
Figure 14. Brushless DC motor together with drive/control circuit built by NIDEC Motor Engineering
Research Laboratory for F5B radio-controlled racing gliders.