Pocket-Sized Portable Labs: Control Engineering Practice Made Easy

Organiser

Paulo Moura Oliveira (University of Trás-os-montes and Alto Douro(UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal)

Sponsoring IFAC body

IFAC National Member Organisation Portugal: APCA-Associação Portuguesa de Controlo Automático (Portuguese Association for Automatic Control)

Link

http://www.apca.pt/

Overview

The best way to motivate students to enroll in control engineering is by showing and demonstrating that simple practical experiments may be easily accomplished using portable pocket-size laboratories. Portable kits based in Arduino and Raspberry Pi can be both used within in presence classes by students and lecturers as well as at home. This portable feature has proved yet more important due to the Covid-19 pandemic times. An excellent example of a pocket-sized Arduino is called Temperature Control Laboratory(TCLab). This activity consists demonstrating the TCLab kit to easily conduct simple practical temperature control experiments.