Round Table I: CAD in Education and Control Laboratories: COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN AND REAL TIME CONTROL IN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the hardware research projects carried out by students using computer-aided design (CAD) at Furuta laboratory, Japan. At Furuta laboratory, all undergraduate research projects are concerned with the control of mechanical systems, for example, double inverted pendulum or magnetic levitation of an iron plate. Through these projects, they learn the procedure from how to treat given systems till how to design and implement the control system. They realize that the broad spectrum of the knowledge they learn is useful in practice. The experiences may be helpful not only for those who will work for industries but also for those who later engage in theoretical researches as they become aware of applicability and problems of existing control theory. The students are not bothered by making programs during the research project, and when they want to try some algorithms not included in the CAD, they can interactively do the matrix operations and time series analysis. By the help of the CAD, the students who are concerned with hardware researches can be more involved in the research and even the students doing theory can check the theory that they develop or make simulation examples for their papers.