Development of an Android App as a learning tool of dynamic systems and automatic control

This work shows the development of an Android app as a tool for learning concepts of automatic control and dynamic systems. For this purpose, an App to simulate a closed loop control for a mass-spring-damper system was implemented for Android devices. In this closed loop control, the plant and the controller can work together in the same device. This operation type is called stand-alone mode. Another option is to simulate in different devices the controller and the plant. This operation type is called remote mode. A fourth-order Runge-Kutta was used as a numerical method for solving the differential equations of the controller and the plant whichever the operation mode is used. The results of the solution of the differential equation were used to visualize the relevant variables of the system at time domain (position of the mass, control action and reference) and to create an animation. The App allows the plant and the controller to be parameterized independently. Besides, the App lets the user generate perturbations to the controlled system using the device´s touch screen or its proximity sensor.