Mechanical Engineering

This course provides individual research training for students in the Junior Year Engineering Program through the experience of belonging to a specific laboratory at Tohoku University. Students are assigned to a laboratory with the consent of the faculty member in charge. They participate in various group activities, including seminars, for the purposes of training in research methods and developing teamwork skills. The specific topic studied depends on the instructor in charge of the laboratory to which each student is assigned. The methods of assessment vary with the student's project and laboratory instructor. Students submit an abstract concerning the results of their individual research each semester and present the results near the end of this program.

This course provides the technical expertise on various thermal and power cycle technologies as well as the tools needed to assess and evaluate various optimized solutions. The course builds upon previous knowledge in thermodynamics theory and cycle analysis.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training A (IRT A) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the fall semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the term.

This course offers a study of the key aspects and concepts of mechanism and machine science (MMS). Topics include: fundamental mechanisms and passive resistances; cams; spur gears; gear trains; machine regulation-- flywheels, balancing; shocks and percussions in kinematic pairs; analytical mechanics applied to mechanisms; helical cylindrical gears, bevel, and hypoid gears; spatial mechanisms.

This course gives an introduction to several subdomains of intelligent autonomous systems and robotics, and an orientation about fundamental methods and algorithms within these domains. Content covered includes three-layer architecture, Perception-Action Cycle, Robotic architectures, world models, Robot Perception, SLAM, reasoning under uncertainty, MAP-Slam, actuation, picking, placing, and reasoning and planning. 

This course provides an overview of robot mechanisms, dynamics, and intelligent controls. Topics include planar and spatial kinematics, and motion planning; mechanism design for manipulators and mobile robots; multi-body dynamics; control design, actuators, and sensors; sensing and perception to enable intelligent behavior; and computer vision. Weekly laboratories provide experience with servo drives, real-time control, task modelling and embedded software. Students will build working robotic systems in a group-based term project.

This course enables students to learn about and engage with engineering in the context of global society and within the engineering industry. Students apply this knowledge to create and plan initiatives, gaining an understanding of being an EDI champion and improving interpersonal skills. This course will provide students with the knowledge and critical understanding of the key issues surrounding equality, diversity and inclusion in engineering, STEM and wider society and to identify and evaluate actionable methods of embedding EDI into engineering education and/or industry

This course provides a study of the principles of heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation.

This course provides a study of the basic concepts in occupational biomechanics and design methods for enhancing workers’ occupational health and work productivity. Topics include the human musculoskeletal system, anthropometry, bioinstrumentation, occupational biomechanical models, postural stress, and manual materials handling.