Interactive teaching system for simulation and control of electropneumatic and electrohydraulic systems

Considering the importance of practices in electropneumatic and electrohydraulic systems education and training, the goal of this work is to present an interactive teaching system useful in simulation and control of electropneumatic and electrohydraulic systems. The interactive system is based on applications developed for Windows operating system using LabVIEW and FluidSIM software. The teaching tools are organized in experiments with a real electropneumatic and electrohydraulic structure and in experiments with simulators, all with friendly graphical user interface. The presented interactive teaching system allows an improvement in electropneumatic and electrohydraulic education and training. The system has didactic properties such as modularity of the package, friendly graphical user interfaces and so on, helping students to understand and compare different modeling and control methods. The package can be easily extended with new experiments. Some applications of this interactive system for simulation and control of a Festo MPS (Modular Production System) Compact Workstation for Automation are presented.