The development of an educational, control engineering laboratory in a developing country

The development of educational engineering laboratories, especially in the multidisciplinary fields such as control and robotics, has a direct bearing on the possibilities of technology transfer in developing countries. The local constraints of such countries make the "turn key" approach to technology transfer a very expensive, wasteful, and probably a useless endeavour. This paper suggests and tries to prove that a feasible solution to this technology transfer problem can be carried out by the educational institutions themselves through the development of their own apparatus, expertise and training programs. It describes the development of a control engineering educational laboratory at the industrial Engineering Department of the University of Jordan, starting from a control system simulator and an articulated robot arm, through the use of final year graduation projects. In both instances, the results were so encouraging that the department decided to support the effort and further developments are now underway.