ABSTRACT
As the degree of automation increases, particularly intelligent automation, high reliability, fail-safe and fault tolerance become an essential part of the mechatronic system design. A mechatronic system is reliable if no failure and malfunction could result in an unsafe system; is safe if it causes no injury or damage to the operator, environment and system itself; is fail-safe if the system could be stopped safely after the failure; and is fault tolerant if the system could complete its task safely after any failure.
