Enhancing control engineering education using a CACSD didactic environment

The classical approaches to teach the control systems present drawbacks, such as: (i) the general overview of the problem is sometimes underemphasized by the knowledge acquisition; (ii) they mainly use the academic examples that are only dealing with simple concepts and problems; (iii) laboratory experiments are either simple or under developed. Design aspects of control systems when applied to practical processes are important to improve the knowledge of the students and to motivate the utilization of modern methodologies as an emergent technology for the applications in industry. In this work, we point out some important aspects for conceiving a new educational product. We describe our experiences in creating a didactic environment for teaching and learning the control theories in engineering courses based on CACSD (computer aided control system design) and its extension to the research field of industrial problems. Two distinct proposals arise from these experiences for reducing the gap between the theoretical and practical classes, and for teaching the control systems development cycle using mathematical tools and real plants under the virtual instrumentation concept.

[1]  L.V.R. de Arruda,et al.  Integration of Computer Science Concepts into a Control and Automation Teaching Methodology: The Conception of a Didactic Laboratory , 1999 .

[2]  Mikael Johansson,et al.  Dynamic pictures and interactive learning , 1998 .

[3]  Sylviane Gentil,et al.  Autodidact: A simulation-based learning environment in automatic control , 1997, 1997 European Control Conference (ECC).

[4]  Dong Mei Zhang,et al.  Management of exercise-based training process , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Information Intelligence and Systems (Cat. No.96CH35929).

[5]  Karl Johan Åström,et al.  Interactive tools for education in automatic control , 1998 .

[6]  Eduardo Rocha Loures,et al.  VIEnCoD-proposal of an environment CACSD in the support to the control system development cycle based on VXIbus/LabWindows and MATLAB platform , 1998, 1998 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (Cat. No. 98CB36268).

[7]  Cao Jinfang,et al.  Teaching Experiences of Servo System Experiments , 1995 .

[8]  G. Donzellini,et al.  Learning environment for digital electronics , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Information Intelligence and Systems (Cat. No.96CH35929).

[9]  H. Hanselmann Hardware-in-the-loop simulation testing and its integration into a CACSD toolset , 1996, Proceedings of Joint Conference on Control Applications Intelligent Control and Computer Aided Control System Design.

[10]  Z. Binder,et al.  Use and Misuse of Computer for Control Education , 1994 .

[11]  Bonnie S. Heck,et al.  An interactive tool for classical control design education , 1999, Proceedings of the 1999 American Control Conference (Cat. No. 99CH36251).

[12]  R. Rutz,et al.  CAMeL: an open CACSD environment , 1995 .