Teaching competences in control education: the French industrial science example

Systems engineers have to analyse, design or control become more and more complex, capturing multidisciplinary aspects such as mechanical, electrical, environmental, or economical point of views. In this framework, control education has to be gathered into a global approach where the design of a control law is not the main goal, but one of the ingredients for the system to achieve satisfactory performances. In France, a revolutionary way of teaching control science was introduced fifteen years ago. It is based on the study of real industrial systems, with a large part given to laboratory works and project-based learning. This paper describes this approach. Several system study examples highlight the main concepts and prove the efficiency of the methods, both in terms of competences teaching and popularity among students.