Digital Control at Stanford

In this paper the two Stanford courses of one quarter (10 weeks) each covering the material of "Digital Control of Dynamic Systems" by the authors (Franklin and Powell, 1980) are described. The courses have neither homework nor exams but are based on laboratories using IBM PC computers with locally designed and constructed analog plants. Rather formal reports are also required, covering the seven labs on digital filters, control design by transform methods, control design by state space methods, and quantization effects in course I (4-unit credit) and identification, Kalman filters and LQG design in course II (3 units). The courses are taught several times per year by faculty from EE, ME and AA, and satisfy degree requirements in each of these departments; the students are mainly first year graduate students from these departments with a few undergraduates.