Introducing control in an open online course

Begin Robotics is a successful open online course developed at the University of Reading, run on the FutureLearn platform, for which around 25,000 participants have enrolled in its first three runs. Whilst it is aimed at introducing robotics and the associated subjects of cybernetics, artificial intelligence, control and haptics to Key Stage 3 pupils, it has been taken by other groups from around the world. This paper discusses how Control Engineering is introduced in an accessible way, and how it has been used in undergraduate degrees.