Abstract
Instructional laboratories are common in engineering programs. Instructional laboratories should evolve with technology and support the changes in higher education, like the increased popularity of online courses. In this study, an affordable and portable laboratory kit was designed to replace the expensive on-campus equipment for two control systems courses. The complete kit costs under $135 and weighs under 0.68 kilograms. It is comprised of off-the-shelf components (e.g., Raspberry Pi, DC motor) and 3D printed parts. The kit has two different configurations. The first (base) configuration is a DC motor system with a position and speed sensor. The second configuration adds a Furuta inverted pendulum attachment with another position sensor. These configurations replicate most of the student learning outcomes for the two control systems courses for which they were designed.
Highlights
Instructional laboratories are a common part of undergraduate engineering education
The budget is only three times the cost of an iClicker, another common piece of technology that students purchase for courses, and the approximate cost of other low-cost kits for other courses found in literature [3,15]
Within the two phases of this study, we developed two kits for use in instructional laboratories for control systems courses
Summary
Instructional laboratories are a common part of undergraduate engineering education. Historically, these laboratories have taken place on campus with expensive equipment. Replacing expensive equipment with an affordable kit that can be shipped anywhere in the world increases the accessibility of the controls laboratory experience for students on campus and remote locations. System ID and Control of a non-linear system via the web During the GE 320 pilot study half of the laboratory sections used the existing equipment (baseline) and the other half used the new kit (treatment). Equipment Overview Introduction to Raspberry Pi Programming with Simulink More programming with Raspberry Pi Introduction to Raspberry Pi GPIO through T-Cobbler interface DAC and ADC Signal I/O DC Motor Discrete Transfer Function Identification PI Motor Speed Control Positioning Control of a Motor Using PD, PID, and Hybrid Control Notch Filter Discrete Full State Feedback Control of the Furuta Pendulum Control of the Furuta Pendulum using a Full Order Observer. The primary application of the Mobile Studio IOBoard is undergraduate circuits courses
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