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ASEE2010 Pendulum
ASEE2010 Pendulum
ASEE2010 Pendulum
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Proceedings of the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Zone IV Conference
Copyright 2010, American Society for Engineering Education
Fig. 7: Closed loop response
This experience leads to the third phase of the project which introduces the concept of time
delay. Students are asked to augment their model with a first-order lag term (third pole added
at
D
T / 2 ) which models the time delay introduced by the digital sampling, data transfer. The
time delay,
D
T , varies based on the computer performance but is generally in the range of 30-50
ms. Using this additional information, they are able to modify their predictions by re-plotting the
root locus of a third order system as shown in Fig. 8. Subsequent testing of the closed loop
response does predict the correct stability limit of the closed loop gain.
Fig. 8: Root locus of third-order system reflecting the effect of time delay
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
-20
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Disturbances
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Proceedings of the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Zone IV Conference
Copyright 2010, American Society for Engineering Education
IV. Student experience assessment
An anonymous survey was conducted for the students choosing the project, to share their
experience after the first semester this project setup was offered in the Control System Design
course, following the protocol approved by the Institutional Review Board. As part of the
evaluation students were asked questions about the technical content as well as the
implementation and impact of the take-home project. Table 1 shows the evaluation of technical
content. As expected the majority of the students found the system quite useful in illustrating the
principles of control system design. Since frequency design methods were not used, the students
correctly indicated that Bode plots were not illustrated (row 7 in Table 1).
Table 1. Students technical experience assessment
As a comparison group, a paper-based term project was also offered. In the second part of the
survey, we asked the students why they had chosen the hardware project over the paper-based
one. The majority of them were excited by seeing the effect of the application of control theory
to a tangible system. They were also interested in establishing a connection between the
calculations and the experimental results. Comments such as I was excited about the idea of
Proceedings of the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Zone IV Conference
Copyright 2010, American Society for Engineering Education
actually seeing this design work on paper get implemented into a tangible mechanismThe
hardware project offered a more real-world physical representation of control system designIt
seemed more interesting to be able to apply the topic to a physical system rather than a
theoretical controller design
The third set of questions referred to the implementation of the project, i.e. how portable and
convenient the kit is, whether the students were able to find necessary data, and how needed was
the assistance of a teaching assistant. The percentage of students who answered yes to each
question is shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Project implementation assessment
Did not need a physical lab at all, I could do everything myself 56 %
Had to use the TA a bit, but 1 hr per week was enough 32 %
I needed to ask for additional assistance outside the 1 hr/week from the TA/instructor 8 %
The project should be done in a permanent lab with fixed operating hours and TA-s 4 %
Finally, we inquired about the impact the project had on other courses taken by students by
administering a survey 6 months after completing the class. Students reported that the greatest
contribution of the project was in using controls in their senior-year capstone design course.
More than 50% of the students also indicated that they had used this experience in their job
search by including it on their resumes.
V. Conclusion
An inexpensive (less than $100) take-home experimental setup has been designed for a hands-on
experience of mechanical engineering students with a real control system. This makes it suitable
for a term project, where minimal or no supervision is required, and no special time or place is
needed. It also helps students whose major is not electrical engineering to become familiar with
the modern developments in implementation of real-time control systems. While simple, the
hardware allows demonstration of advanced concepts such as feedback linearization and time
delay. Early evaluation data show that the project is well-received among students and it can be
completed at home as initially conceived.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation under Grant
Nos. 0633312 and 0637052.
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Proceedings of the 2010 American Society for Engineering Education Zone IV Conference
Copyright 2010, American Society for Engineering Education
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