Experiences with CACSD in Education

Abstract

The paper describes some educational experiences gained in the course on computer aided control system design. This specialized course is one of the courses on automatic control at the Faculty of electrical and computer engineering, (University of Ljubljana. Its topic is control problem solving with CACSD tools. In the course, the main stress is given to the methodology which reflects the strength of CAD tools and avoids their weakness. For this purpose, we try to use lately a combination of tools in practical student exercises. On the contrary, few years ago we had to rely only on our own software, i.e. universal CACSD package ANA. That period should be regarded as an experimental one Namely, we were inexperienced in CACSD education. So, we first tried to gain some experiences and to evaluate ANA as an educational tool. Thus, in 1986/87 practical student exercises were carried oui in the way which enabled partial evaluation of interactive principles and in 1987/88 in the way which enabled educational oriented evaluation. The paper deals with the observations and analysis of these exercises. Naturally, later improvements of the course content and the way it is carried out are also shortly discussed. Due to the fact that presented problems are in our opinion quite independent of the tool we believe that the paper could be interesting to CACSD community, especially to novices, i.e. beginners and inexperienced users, and course organizers. Furthermore, we find education role for the CACSD field so important that an appeal for more organized activities is given in the paper