A force-feedback joystick for control and robotics education - affordable software for educational institutions

This article describes a project that converts low-cost commercially available force feedback joysticks into flexible experimental facilities for control systems education and virtual reality simulations without hardware modifications. The software allows educational institutions to offer affordable hands-on laboratories, featuring a traditional or discovery-learning approach. With intuitive software running in the MATLAB environment, it is now possible to introduce large undergraduate classes to control engineering.