Emulation-Based Virtual Laboratories: A Low-Cost Alternative to Physical Experiments in Control Engineering Education

This paper argues the case for emulation-based virtual laboratories in control engineering education. It demonstrates that such emulation experiments can give students an industrially relevant educational experience at relatively low cost. The paper also describes a particular emulation-based system that has been developed with the aim of giving students an introduction to real-world control engineering design.

I. Introduction

Education in applied areas, such as control engineering, takes many forms ranging from highly theoretical to deeply vocational.