UT Students Design Their Own Control Experiments
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Professor Robert Bishop, author of the Modern Control Systems textbook, created an undergraduate controls laboratory based on NI LabVIEW software where students can design, simulate, and implement a variety of real-time control experiments. This laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) introduces students to the theory and implementation issues of classical and modern control systems using industrial real-time hardware and software.
Innovative Course Design
To avoid canned control experiments and a disconnect between homework and the experiments, Bishop designed his course to include the LabVIEW Control Design and Simulation Module along with the LabVIEW Real-Time and LabVIEW FPGA modules to provide additional programming and design projects. The class also employs the NI PXI-7831R multifunction intelligent data acquisition module at several stations and the NI PCI-7831R board at two stations.
The course initially used an “insert-code-here” approach in which students developed the code for a continuous-time controller and inserted it into a prebuilt template for signal generation, timing, plotting, and data storage. However, students requested even more LabVIEW use for a complete understanding of the experiment design and implementation. Now, students create the complete control system themselves. Figure 2 shows an example of a redesigned control experiment. Using just one LabVIEW simulation and control loop structure, the program provides the required command, feedback control, analog output, and encoder feedback signals along with a simple user interface, data storage, and plotting.
Figure 1. (above right) Bishop’s laboratory uses NI hardware and torsional and translational plants from Educational Control Products.
Figure 2. (below left) This real-time control program uses the LabVIEW Control Design and Simulation Module with single-point LabVIEW FPGA I/O.
Hands-On Control Design Experience
Undergraduate students now can see a strong correlation between simulation and experiment while gaining valuable design and hands-on experience. Bishop states, “The use of LabVIEW ties the students’ simulation homework to their in-lab experiments and provides them with a complete control design experience. In future course development, students will be given the option to use LabVIEW MathScript for prelab control design and analysis tasks. This way, students can choose to use either graphical, textual, or a combined approach to develop control designs.”
View a video of the experiment using the code discussed in this article.
Controls Textbook Incorporates LabVIEW MathScript
Modern Control Systems,
11th edition
Richard Dorf and Robert Bishop Prentice Hall
Modern Control Systems, a best-selling textbook on control theory, now uses LabVIEW MathScript to introduce and apply modeling and design concepts. The LabVIEW MathScript tutorial appendix and online simulations provide an innovative approach to control system design that enhances student learning.
View a video of the experiment using the code discussed in this article.
This article first appeared in the Q4 2007 issue of Instrumentation Newsletter.
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