Distributed Laboratory for System Dynamics and Control

分布式系统动力学与控制实验室

• 批准号: 0231121
• 负责人: William Durfee
• 金额: $ 7.49万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-04-01 至 2006-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0231121&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Distributed; Laboratory; System; Dynamics; Control

For engineering students in introductory system dynamics and controls courses that need to gain intuitive feel for physical systems, our distributed laboratory is a way to explore basic concepts through a hands-on experience that uses inexpensive, custom hardware and software kits. Unlike traditional laboratory experiences, our distributed lab kit is brought home by each student and tackled on a self-paced schedule in much the same manner as a homework assignment, thus allowing each student to customize the laboratory experience to his or her learning style. In our pilot project, lab kits whose parts cost are less than $100 when purchased in lot sizes of 100 will be designed and tested. Our kits contains a controller board based on a standard microcontroller chip that implements real-time control and data acquisition software and communicates with a host over a serial port. The systems under study will be hardware modules that connect to the controller board. The host computer will be the student's home PC running a Visual Basic application for experiment control. Twenty-five kits with a motor-driven inertia hardware module, an electrical network plus speaker module and a cantilever beam module will be constructed and given to undergraduate mechanical engineering students in the beginning system dynamics course as part of their regular curriculum. Our evaluation plan will assess project progress, views of the students and other stakeholders about the distributed lab, and the impact of the lab on student learning.

对于需要获得物理系统直观感受的系统动力学和控制入门课程的工程专业学生来说，我们的分布式实验室是一种通过使用廉价的定制硬件和软件套件的实践经验来探索基本概念的方法。与传统的实验室体验不同，我们的分布式实验套件由每个学生带回家，并以与家庭作业大致相同的方式按照自定进度的时间表进行处理，从而允许每个学生根据自己的学习风格定制实验室体验。在我们的试点项目中，我们将设计和测试以 100 件批量购买时零件成本低于 100 美元的实验室套件。我们的套件包含一个基于标准微控制器芯片的控制器板，该芯片实现实时控制和数据采集软件，并通过串行端口与主机通信。正在研究的系统将是连接到控制器板的硬件模块。主机将是学生的家用 PC，运行用于实验控制的 Visual Basic 应用程序。将构建二十五个套件，其中包含电机驱动惯性硬件模块、电气网络加扬声器模块和悬臂梁模块，并将其提供给机械工程本科生，作为其常规课程的一部分，开始系统动力学课程。我们的评估计划将评估项目进度、学生和其他利益相关者对分布式实验室的看法以及实验室对学生学习的影响。