Experiment-Based Teaching in Advanced Control Engineering

This paper discusses an experiment-based approach to teaching an advanced control engineering syllabus involving controlled plant analysis and modeling, control structures and algorithms, real-time laboratory experiments, and their assessment. These experiments are structured around the representative case of the longitudinal slip control of an antilock braking system (ABS). The basic and advanced control strategies that are experimentally studied include the proportional-integral (PI) control, gain scheduling, iterative feedback tuning (IFT) and fuzzy control. The final grades obtained by representative groups of students demonstrate the efficiency of a described hands-on laboratory experimental study of a complex antilock braking system as encountered in practice, which allowed students to gain a better understanding of the theoretical aspects learned during the lectures.