ECE.18 – Control Systems Lab Kit

Amar Bensamra, Jakob Gudas, Emadeldeen Hamdan, Francisco Ocegueda

At the University of Illinois at Chicago, the students of ECE 350, Principles of Automatic Control, are only using MATLAB and Simulink to demonstrate what they have learned in the class. Our aim was to create a hardware lab kit for the students to give them a physical system that will give them the opportunity to visualize the outputs of their MATLAB and Simulink programs in real time. We have designed a hardware lab kit that is portable, low-cost, and easy to troubleshoot. Measuring roughly 7 inches long, 4.6 inches wide, and 6 inches tall, the lab kit is a portable system powered on by a standard 110V power cord. To provide extra robustness, the kit has the ability to be clamped down to a workbench. The kit is low cost at about $250, while other such control system lab kits can cost upwards of thousands of dollars. It consists of familiar hardware such as Raspberry Pi 3, a DC motor, and a motor driver. Along with these components, we have created a variety of attachments for the motor, including a furuta pendulum and a color wheel, to design a multitude of control systems. Moreover, we designed a PCB to minimize the use of wires to provide better reliability for the electrical signals throughout the components, and overall making the kit much more compact. The kit is enclosed using 3D printed parts and plexiglass sheets, held together by screws. This provides a way to disassemble the kit and swap out parts, if needed, since most of the parts are easily purchasable or 3D printable. The Raspberry Pi 3 is integrated with MATLAB/Simulink to allow the students to design their own control system and manipulate the movement of the motor. There is also a graphical user interface that allows the students to manipulate the control system without needing to write code from scratch. The kit also comes with multiple labs for the students to follow to demonstrate their knowledge of control systems. So far, we have a working hardware prototype that integrates with MATLAB/Simulink. This set up allows for a control systems experiment to be conducted physically as well as see simulation results on the computer.