State Space Model Based Control in Virtual Laboratory

Applying virtual laboratories in teaching can improve and complete university lectures. This paper presents four labs that allow engineering students to study and design a pole placement based controller for typical problems: inverted pendulum, Furuta pendulum, crane, ball and beam. The dynamics of the plants, instructions for controller design and test are provided on smartboards of the virtual laboratory. The controller performance can be studied by the model of the real-life application. The mathematical models and controller design are presented as well as the experiences in the virtual laboratory of control engineering.

I. Introduction

Distance learning and e-Learning materials are widely used at universities. Virtual laboratories as special way of teaching and studying engineering disciplines provide interactive learning tools [1–12]. A VR lab consists of an engineering system to be studied with supplementary learning materials (static texts, instructions, videos, online software etc).