Educational Platform for Teaching Automation and Control Engineering: A Pneumatic Levitation System

In this paper, the design and implementation of an industrial automation platform and a pneumatic levitation system are proposed. This system allows to analyze and evaluate control algorithms. The user interface and control were designed based on LabViewand MATLAB programming tools. A first learning activity for students (in the proposed system) is the design of controllers based on model and, in designer's experience in the process. Therefore, two controllers are proposed. The first one a traditional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and the other one a PD-fuzzy controller. The performance of each controller was analyzed by comparing the outputs for tracking reference (step input). The educational platform was created with the aim of contributing to the strengthening of the teaching-learning processes of the main theoretical aspects of control engineering and programmable logic controllers.