Abstract
It is now widely recognized that engineering education must include training in communication and teamwork skills in addition to traditional engineering science and design topics. This paper presents a control laboratory experience designed to provide such training in a realistic manner. This experience centers on the standard control problem of designing of a closed loop speed control system for a dc motor. This laboratory project differs from the standard presentation in several ways. First, the problem statement is intentionally very vague. The students are simply told to design a system that accepts a target speed from a user and brings the motor to that speed. Similarly, the components supplied to the students (motors, shafts, amplifiers, bearings) do not come with specifications. To solve this problem, the students must clarify the vague user specified requirements, model the physical system mathematically, design experiments to determine the values of system parameters such as motor torque constant and bearing friction, design a control algorithm to meet the problem requirements, and build the control system. To incorporate communication training into this exercise, the modeling and characterization tasks are divided among the student teams in the class. Each team must develop and perform experiments to determine the values of certain characteristics and present the results of their experiments to their classmates. Since all students depend on the accuracy of each groups results, useful questions are raised during these presentations. In fact, the student critiques of other students’ presentations provide excellent discussions of key aspects of modeling and experimental design. This laboratory experience has been extremely successful in achieving the objectives described above. Based on student performance and course evaluations it also had the effect of integrating a number of modeling and controls concepts in the students’ minds. Included in the presentations are feedback from students and plans for future modifications to the laboratory experience.