Control system development for undergraduate exposure

The more “real world” exposure students get on all aspects of control system development the better prepared they will be to quickly adapt to product development in industry. Undergraduate student involvement in automotive hybrid development competitions, such as EcoCAR, exposes them to areas that they usually not see in typical undergraduate controls courses. EcoCAR design competition exposes them to a product development experience very similar to what they would see in industry. This paper will discuss the benefits obtained by undergraduate students and industry sponsors participating in design competitions such as EcoCAR. The student exposure experienced in the competition includes a complete system architecture selection and design, control strategy development, both high and low level control code generation, in the loop testing, and product validation. The students also have the opportunity to interface with professionals from the sponsor companies guiding them on use of state-of-the-art industry engineering tools and techniques.