From Industry to the Classroom: A Low-Cost Hardware-In-Loop Simulator for Classic Controls Experiments

Control system design and validation can be a frustrating experience for many students. These students benefit from the inclusion of a laboratory component that provides a hands-on experience to complement lecture. However, physical space and funding for educational labs are always competitive. One solution is the use of low-cost take-home kits that allow students to design and validate feedback controllers outside of the confines of a physical laboratory space. Currently, take-home kits are often used for simpler tasks, such as controlling LEDs and motors, and do not extend to feedback control of classical control experiments, such as the inverted pendulum. Inspired by industrial controller design techniques, a low-cost take-home kit was developed to act as a Hardware-in-Loop tester for the inverted pendulum experiment. The resulting low-cost Hardware-in-Loop tester is validated against a real inverted pendulum to demonstrate performance.