Some Observations on Teaching Practical Controller Tuning Methods in a Laboratory Set-up

摘要

Most technical universities use similar methods for educating future control engineers in the field of control circuit design. Importance is attached to theoretical knowledge of control, rather than practical skills, and this is supported by textbooks that have a mainly theoretical character. The mathematical knowledge of students may be strengthened in this way, and they can acquire a good insight into theoretical relations, but the students receive little training in problems of everyday implementation. This has led to an absurd situation, where industrial practice rejects advanced modern methods due to some unsatisfactory results, failing to take into account that the design method is not to blame. Experience has been acquired from a comparison between the new model-free PID controller tuning algorithm and other tuning procedures which are easy to describe theoretically, but which are difficult to implement in practice. Some successfully implemented methods are generally regarded as insufficiently scientific, or remain in individual ownership of implementation experts. This paper focuses on how to deal with controller adjustment, with reference to implementation and to ways of training control engineers.