golf 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
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
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
This sensor module has 8 IR LED/phototransistor pairs mounted on a 0.375" pitch, making it a great detector for a line-following robot. Pairs of LEDs are arranged in series to halve current consumption, and a MOSFET allows the LEDs to be turned off for additional sensing or power-savings options. Each sensor provides a separate analog voltage output