Drives and motion control teaching based on distance laboratory and remote experiments

Abstract

This paper presents the organisation and the technical structure of a remote controlled laboratory in the field of high dynamic drives and motion control. It is part of the PEMCWebLab project with the goal of providing students with practical experience on real systems in the field of power electronics and drives. The whole project is based on clear targets and leading ideas. A set of experiments can be remotely performed on a real system to stepwise identify a two axes positioning system and to design different cascaded control loops. Each single experiment is defined by its goals, the content of how to achieve them, and a verification of the results as well as the achieved learning outcomes. After a short description of the PEMCWebLab project, the structure of the remote control is presented together with the hardware applied. One important point is error handling as real machines and power electronics are applied. Finally, a selection of experiments is presented to show the graphical user interface and the sequence of the laboratory.