Undergraduate Controls Laboratory Experience

The purpose of this paper is to share the educational experience offered to the students through a controls laboratory course in the electrical engineering program at the University of North Florida. The laboratory experience included the design and prototyping of proportional, proportionalintegral, proportional-derivative, and PID controllers as operational amplifier circuits and also as stand-alone C programs that ran on Motorola's M68HC912B32 microcontrollers. Both types of controllers (analog and digital) were applied to a single shaft mechanical plant driven by a dc motor. Through these controllers, the students attained precise position and speed control of the motor. They also observed the difference in the performances of the analog and digital controllers and identified the advantages and disadvantages of each type. This paper describes the labs developed for the students, the lab results, and the students’ learning experience. Student evaluations for this lab course were very favorable. Through this lab course and two control theory courses, the students gained good understanding of the fundamentals of feedback control systems.