Feedback controls is a powerful and important subject
that can be challenging for students to learn. Controls
can come across as mathematically intensive and abstract.
Experimental projects and demonstrations can
increase students’ interest in controls and expose them
to the practical challenges of implementing control
systems [1], [2]. Experimental projects can also help
students develop necessary skills for building and debugging
control systems. In a 2009 IEEE Controls System
Society survey, 72% of industry respondents felt that
"hands-on experience" is the area that most needs to
be strengthened to better prepare control engineers for
successful careers [3].
Setting up feedback control experiments can be challenging,
especially if the control law needs to be executed
at hard, real-time intervals. There are many commercially
available real-time data acquisition and control
solutions. Experiments based on these commercially
available options have been used in controls courses and
have been well-received by students [4], [5], [6].
Given the cost of engineering laboratories and the
pressures on many university budgets, low-cost or student
owned experiments have attracted some attention in
the literature. Several researchers have presented ideas
for low-cost or students-owned plants and investigated
how to use these plants to enrich controls courses and
facilitate different pedagogical techniques