Dawn Tilbury

The project consists of five tutorials on using Matlab for control system design and analysis; it is implemented on the WWW for ease of access and use. Running the examples given in the tutorial is as simple as cutting and pasting from the tutorial window to the Matlab window; changing parameters ("tweaking" the controller) can then be accomplished by editing the command line. In contrast to tutorials which are printed on handouts or in books, almost no typing is necessary. In addition, the graphical output of the examples are shown on-screen in the tutorials for ease of comparison.

The first tutorial is a brief introduction to using Matlab, and covers basic topics such as the syntax of Matlab commands, plotting options, matrix manipulations, and system responses. The second tutorial explores the different ways that a linear system can be represented, both mathematically and within Matlab. Round-off errors are also examined, reminding the students that they should be careful when interpreting the results from any numerical computation. The third tutorial describes the root-locus method for the design of control systems. The example system to be controlled is taken from a problem on the first midterm exam. Several different controllers are examined, including a simple proportional control, proportional-derivative control, a lead network, and a notch filter. For each type of controller, the choice of a gain from the root locus is explained, and the step response is computed and displayed. The fouth tutorial discusses frequency response techniques for designing controllers; these techniques are useful for systems which do not have good mathematical models but whose frequency response (Bode plot) can be determined experimentally. The last tutorial is concerned with controller design using "modern" or state-space techniques; both controllers and observers are covered.