Simulation and Design of Control Systems: A Rapid Software Prototyping Class for Mechanical Engineering Students

Abstract

This paper presents the structure and approaches used in a rapid software prototyping class for students of automation in mechanical engineering. The class connects the knowledge from other classes, handling mathematical modeling and design of control systems, and shows how to implement a model of such a system in real time, where the plant model runs in simulation, Hardware in the Loop (HiL), and the controller runs on real hardware. In the presented class, the Nucleo STM32F767ZI board is used as the HW controller. Part of the tasks is to find and explain the differences between pure simulation and simulation in real time and also to visualize the plant. The results presented are based on experience with three years of teaching the class with about 80 students in total.