Design Of Control Systems As Learning Activity

Abstract

Logical control design provides an excellent project-based learning activity in engineering education. It opens a way to teach the fundamentals of synthesis, analysis and decision-making using one and the same environment. In the Computer Engineering curricula, there is a chain of courses dealing with the logical control design. These courses are “Switching Theory and Logic Design“, “Advanced Switching Theory”, “Digital Systems”, “Computer Architecture”, “VLSI Design”, “Computer Aided Design”. In the Electrical Engineering curricula, such courses as “Automation” and “Process Control” also include a logic control design oriented subject matter. Actually, the logic control design weaves together the Computer and the Engineering Curriculums, forming one of the key issues in both of them. The modern requirements to the logic control design course are: • formal methods of design on each stage thereof, from initial specification of a controller up to its final implementation and verification, • a computer-based environment for supporting the students’ practical work. This paper proposes: a) a universal formal notation, including concepts of ASM (Algorithmic State Machine) and FSM (Finite State Machine), as a methodological fundamental of the logical control design, b) an Interactive Learning Environment developed on the base of the formal notation. The proposed approach enables transforming, uniting, minimizing, and decomposing both ASMs and FSMs. On one hand, transformation on a set of the formally defined ASMs and FSMs provides a rich variety of learning activities in the problem solving and the design. On the other hand, the use of the proposed Interactive Learning Environment enables students to design and explore complex control systems. The proposed approach drastically increases a plurality of possible tasks and projects in a class and, consequently, opens an opportunity to enrich both the teaching and the learning processes.

It is a widely known phenomenon, that students experience difficulties while establishing a comprehensive interconnection between theoretical knowledge of a complex subject and a practical knowledge of the same subject. In particular, there is a gap between a theoretical university courses of logical design on one hand, and engineering (practical) courses of circuits’ design. This gap is natural and fundamental, since the theoretical courses are focussed on the methodological and