A design project based approach to teaching automatic control theory to mechanical engineers

Most Mechanical Engineering Programs have an automatic controls course as a required class for juniors or seniors, and most face similar problems. Many students view the class as a large collection of abstract mathematics, and even if they come to enjoy the material and understand how to do the problems, few students walk away from the class feeling confident that they understand how to apply the material to real systems. The most common methods used to alleviate this situation are laboratories and design projects. The author describes how, in Spring 1997, at the University of Wisconsin (USA), he tried a new approach, teaching automatic controls in the same manner he would teach a course centered around design projects. Rather than using a single design project and handing it out in the middle of the semester, he assigned four design projects and handed them out the first day of class. His intention was to provide students with a breadth of design experiences, and also to pet them to think about the design of controllers as an ongoing process for which the theory provides a set of analysis tools. The results were very positive. Students appeared to come away with a better grasp of the material, had more confidence that they could apply the material outside of the classroom and liked the class better than previous groups of students had, despite a significantly increased workload over past semesters.