- Email: [email protected]
Preface to the special section on advances in control education (ACE 2003)
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Control Engineering Practice 14 (2006) 165 www.elsevier.com/locate/conengprac
Editorial
Preface to the special section on advances in control education (ACE 2003) The three papers in this ‘‘mini special section’’ are revised and expanded versions of presentations given at the Advances in Control Education Symposium (ACE 2003) 16–18 July 2003 in Oulu, Finland. The contents of the papers range from teaching basic and advanced Control Engineering to control systems design and rapid controller prototyping. Even though they come from the field of education they also have a valuable contribution to practicing control engineers. As stated in the introduction of Keller’s paper, there is still a wide gap between what the student has to learn and what the control engineer actually uses in his or her work. The approaches presented in these three papers help to decrease this gap. The paper by Leva presents how a simple apparatus can be used to visualize the abstract contents of basic and advanced Control Engineering courses. The guided experiments are integrated with lectures and offered simultaneously to a wide group of students. This makes it possible to let the students face the real control problems already in the early stage of studies, also motivating them to learn more complicated things at the abstract level. The system is a simple temperature controller that is used at the basic level to learn experimental modelling, single-loop control and different PID-tuning approaches. At the more advanced level, multivariable control, decentralised control, feedforward compensation, cascade control and decoupling control are studied. The paper by Keller introduces an interactive control system design tool where the innovation is in the clever design of the user interface. A menu-driven system makes the design more efficient and motivates the user
0967-0661/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.conengprac.2004.12.017
by solving the design problems interactively instead of solving the communication problems with the design system. The system is running on different industrial platforms that have capabilities for distributed process control and for running the real-time version of the design tool. The tool itself includes three main functions: plant modelling and parameter estimation, controller design and controller implementation. For the controller design, two methods are available: a simple loop shaping controller design and a state feedback controller with observer. The paper by Bucher and Balemi goes further to a rapid controller prototyping system that makes it possible with a few steps to go from the simulation model to the real-time controller running on a standard hardware environment. The system is built around a real-time application interface and the users can work inside a consistent environment during all the design stages. The standard hardware allows for the use of rapid prototyping techniques also during the system operation. The system uses Matlab Simulink together with Linux RTAI, the real-time extension of the Linux operating system. The paper includes two examples: a pedagogic one concerning the classical inverted pendulum and an industrial example of high-precision nanopositioning control system.
Kauko Leiviska¨ Control Engineering Laboratory, University of Oulu, Box 4300, Oulu FI-90014, Finland E-mail address: kauko.leiviska@oulu.fi
Control Engineering Practice 14 (2006) 165 www.elsevier.com/locate/conengprac
Editorial
Preface to the special section on advances in control education (ACE 2003) The three papers in this ‘‘mini special section’’ are revised and expanded versions of presentations given at the Advances in Control Education Symposium (ACE 2003) 16–18 July 2003 in Oulu, Finland. The contents of the papers range from teaching basic and advanced Control Engineering to control systems design and rapid controller prototyping. Even though they come from the field of education they also have a valuable contribution to practicing control engineers. As stated in the introduction of Keller’s paper, there is still a wide gap between what the student has to learn and what the control engineer actually uses in his or her work. The approaches presented in these three papers help to decrease this gap. The paper by Leva presents how a simple apparatus can be used to visualize the abstract contents of basic and advanced Control Engineering courses. The guided experiments are integrated with lectures and offered simultaneously to a wide group of students. This makes it possible to let the students face the real control problems already in the early stage of studies, also motivating them to learn more complicated things at the abstract level. The system is a simple temperature controller that is used at the basic level to learn experimental modelling, single-loop control and different PID-tuning approaches. At the more advanced level, multivariable control, decentralised control, feedforward compensation, cascade control and decoupling control are studied. The paper by Keller introduces an interactive control system design tool where the innovation is in the clever design of the user interface. A menu-driven system makes the design more efficient and motivates the user
0967-0661/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.conengprac.2004.12.017
by solving the design problems interactively instead of solving the communication problems with the design system. The system is running on different industrial platforms that have capabilities for distributed process control and for running the real-time version of the design tool. The tool itself includes three main functions: plant modelling and parameter estimation, controller design and controller implementation. For the controller design, two methods are available: a simple loop shaping controller design and a state feedback controller with observer. The paper by Bucher and Balemi goes further to a rapid controller prototyping system that makes it possible with a few steps to go from the simulation model to the real-time controller running on a standard hardware environment. The system is built around a real-time application interface and the users can work inside a consistent environment during all the design stages. The standard hardware allows for the use of rapid prototyping techniques also during the system operation. The system uses Matlab Simulink together with Linux RTAI, the real-time extension of the Linux operating system. The paper includes two examples: a pedagogic one concerning the classical inverted pendulum and an industrial example of high-precision nanopositioning control system.
Kauko Leiviska¨ Control Engineering Laboratory, University of Oulu, Box 4300, Oulu FI-90014, Finland E-mail address: kauko.leiviska@oulu.fi