Bridging theory to practice: Feedforward and cascade control with tclab arduino kit

Abstract

Practice is of the essence in Engineering courses. A relevant question in control engineering education is: How to close the gap between theory and practice? Once subjects are introduced in theoretical classes, students want to know about its practical use. Thus, it is important to introduce theoretical control concepts with practical experiments, enabling students to easily test and validate the theory. An Arduino based temperature control laboratory (TCLab) is deployed in this study as a portable kit providing students with a simple and effective means to test some feedback control techniques. Teaching/learning experiments are proposed involving proportional, integral and derivative controllers with Feedforward and Cascade control structures. Preliminary results achieved in a Portuguese university are presented.