ACS224 Systems Laboratory and Design

Academic year Credits: 10

Module Leader: Professor PJ Fleming

Other Teaching Staff: Mr C Bacon
Pre-requisites: ACS 108, 124, 125 and 126, or equivalents Co-requisites: Restrictions

Introduction
During this Module, the student will acquire laboratory and professional skills through experiments
and will also develop transferable skills appropriate for an engineer. It will consist of a variety of
activities throughout the semester, some of which will be more structured than others.

Aims
The aims of the module are:
To provide experience in problem-solving;
To provide experience in design, implementation and testing of feedback controllers including
user/machine interface issues;
To develop the student’s skills in teamwork and in oral and written reporting of technical work;
To develop further appreciation of professional issues in engineering.

Objectives
At the end of the course, the student should:
have improved problem-solving skills;
have an enhanced appreciation of what is involved in the systems engineering profession;
be able to implement real-time control software;
be able to use one or more computer-based tools to design and implement a control system to
meet a given specification;
be able to recognise and address some of the constraints and additional requirements for
controlling real equipment including the limitations of linear models;
be able to maintain and organise a log book effectively;
understand and be able to address the problems that arise in group working;
have developed their skills in written and oral communication.

Module Format
Lectures and Group Tutorials 5 hrs
Practical Project Course Work 30 hrs
Preparation, Report Writing, Individual Coursework 65 hrs

Background Reading
includes
Goodwin, G.C., Graebe, S.F. and Salgado, M.E., Control System Design, Prentice Hall.
Feynman, R.P., What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious
Character, Penguin.
Pirsig, R.M., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Vintage.

Outline Syllabus
System modelling from theory and test; PID control; control system design; hardware constraint
handling; confirmatory simulation; control system testing and tuning. Career preparation.
Professional ethics. Group report writing; oral presentation and practical system demonstration.
Assessment
Since this module is project-based, it will be assessed by continuous assessment, project by project.

The grade for the module will be derived by aggregating the following:
Design and Implementation projects 70%
Professional Skills 30%