An online Internet laboratory for control experiments

Control engineering courses conducted in the classroom need to be integrated with design and implementation of controllers. This paper describes the implementation of an online Internet laboratory for control experiments for this purpose. It could be an effective alternative to setting up a fully equipped laboratory. The pilot plant used is the rotary inverted pendulum. The setup allows the user to select an appropriate test signal and collect real data for estimating the plant parameters. Using the model identified as a basis for controller design, the students then verify their design by specifying the controller parameters and perform a swing up and balancing experiment on the actual inverted pendulum over the Internet. Copyright (C) 2000 IFAC.