Low Cost Rapid Control Prototyping – a useful method in Control Engineering Education

In this paper, we will report about the adaption of our control education by implementation of Rapid-Control-Prototyping methods in our study program. The first step in this adaption process was a detailed analysis of the main difficulties for students with respect to the implementation of a control task. It turned out that the continuous usage of the proposed software tool chain (MATLAB/Simulink) in class presents a goal-oriented approach when finally implementing a control task also in the lab. We point the students to use MATLAB/Simulink for controller design, simulation and plant identification (data acquisition task) and likewise to also deploy the controller on the specified hardware. Thus, Rapid-Control-Prototyping is a process that allows students to develop, modify and test control strategies on a real-world system. As a main result, we re-designed a specific lab exercise related to digital control in the Bachelor program: we introduced a low-cost rapid prototyping system based on Arduino Uno for position control of a DC-motor. The paper also includes the adaption of a course “Embedded Control Systems” in the consecutive Master program following the idea of integrating lectures with exercises.