A LabView Based Online Control Experiments for Students’ Learning

The buoyancy, dexterity and robustness of internet technologies have given rise to the field of online experimentation. The advantages of placing laboratories online have fuelled the development of this new sphere of laboratory work with a lot of research on-going. While the global set of experiments available on the internet grows, there is a shortage of online introductory experiments in the field of control system engineering. The focus of this study was to expand the set of online experiments in the control engineering field by familiarizing users to control system. In this paper, the development of DC control experiments using i-lab interactive architecture is presented. The study is to design and develop Graphic User Interface (GUIs) using LabVIEW, to ease students in performing position control, speed control and system modeling of the DC servomotor experiments platform. This platform is implemented online using Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) interactive laboratory architecture. The scope of this project is to apply virtual instruments to implement the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller in position control, speed control and modeling of the control system. PID controller was used to control the output response and stabilize the control system. Interactive software is developed to help the students to visualize and analyze the system