Digital control workstation

The digital control lessons and workstation used in the automatic controls course for electrical engineering majors at the United States Military Academy are presented. These digital control lessons culminate with the conversion of a conventional control design for implementation by a digital system. The control system is a lead compensator for a servo trainer configured for position control. Students design lead-lag compensation to achieve phase margin, closed-loop bandwidth and low-frequency gain specifications. The system hardware comprises the following components: an IBM/PC-AC compatible computer, (Zenith Z-248), a PC expansion board that implements the compensator, and a DC servo trainer. A detailed description is given of each of the workstation components and the digital design problem (and solution) that forms the basis for the workstation demonstration