A Holistic View on Engineering Education: How to Educate Control Engineers

This research-to-practice paper presents a holistic approach to teaching control engineering, where focus is set on keeping the students engaged while giving them an evolutionary pathway to learning advanced control engineering. The students start out with a pocket lab, where they are introduced to C-programming of micro controllers through an Arduino with breadboard and accessories. Following on from being able to handle a standalone Arduino, more elements are introduced to the students until they end up with a quad-copter drone, capable of creating maps of its surroundings. To make the transitions easier for the students an RC model car is introduced quite early in the process. The pocket lab, the RC model car and the drone, have all shown to be excellent as tools for attracting students and represent a motivational factor for the students to be more engaged and spend more effort into their work.