On the Educational Aspects of Potential Functions for the System Analysis and Control

This paper focuses on the education aspect of potential functions and presents the concept as a general approach for formulation of dynamic processes in different areas of engineering, e.g., dynamics of motion, electrical fields, power systems, control, and robotics. In power systems, the potential functions have been used in transient stability analysis in capacities such as 1) transient energy function and 2) the theoretical backbone of the equal-area criterion. The unified representation introduced in this paper is to help students (especially global learners by providing them with the big picture of the subject) discover similarities between different disciplines, which facilitates inter-application of the analytical methods. Recognizing the importance of digital computer based simulation techniques in education, the paper also introduces a software tool for assisting students/researchers in experimenting with different forms of potential functions and their application to a dynamic environment consisting of mobile robots, targets, and obstacles.