An undergraduate laboratory platform for control system design, simulation, and implementation

This article describes a low-cost laboratory module that was developed for an undergraduate control systems laboratory. The laboratory module is based on a DC servomotor and allows students to perform a wide variety of experiments such as PID control, state feedback and adaptive control. The article also describes a uniform software environment for performing control systems design, simulation, and implementation in our undergraduate control systems laboratory. The environment is kept uniform because the design, simulation, and implementation stages are carried out entirely using the MATLAB software package.