On October 23, I presented the first paper my advisor, Dr. R.S. Sreenivas, and I published on my research of affordable and portable laboratory kits for undergraduate controls education courses.  The paper and presentation were part of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference in San Antonio, Texas.  The slides from the presentation are included below and the full paper is available in the ASME Digital Collection. 

The paper summarizes the laboratory exercises that can be completed with under $150 of equipment.  These exercises are replications of the current labs in two different undergraduate controls courses in the general engineering program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The first course is GE320: Introduction to Control Systems.  It covers Laplace transforms, system identification, and proportional-integral-derivative control design.  The laboratory exercises cover system identification and control of a DC motor.  The second course is GE420: Digital Control Systems.  It covers digital signal processing and control.  The laboratory exercises build up to control of an inverted pendulum.

More information about the progress of this laboratory kit development can be found here.