A student personal positioning system approach to the analysis, design and fabrication of actual control systems

A personal positioning system approach is presented as a means of providing introductory level students with an enduring exposure to one of the most important aspects of the discipline of control systems engineering, namely the successful implementation of real-world control systems. The aim of the approach is to expose the student to the essential skills of projecting physical system characteristics into the framework of a useful model and the reverse process of translating model simulation results into the physical framework. Each student is individually responsible for accomplishing construction, modeling and controller design. The system hardware costs are minimal as a result of employing surplus components and a novel potentiometer position sensor design. Consequently, the students are entitled to keep their personal positioning systems upon demonstration of successfully satisfying design requirements. A motivation for the development of the student personal positioning system hardware approach is to complement the advent of powerful and user friendly modeling and simulation software packages which make it possible for even the beginning student to completely design a control system in a virtual environment. The personal positioning system provides the critical link between virtual environment and reality. In addition, these software packages make it all the more unlikely that students will encounter actual control systems in more advanced courses and consequently a greater demand is placed on introductory courses to provide a lasting exposure to the skill of relating the physical system to the simulation model