Experimenting with a nonlinear Thermo-Opto-Mechanical System TOM1A*

This paper introduces an illustrative example of modeling and control of an electromechanical channel. This is offered as a new channel of a low cost laboratory scaled model of a thermo-opto-mechanical system suitable both for hands-on and remote experimenting and the wrapped around control problems. The nonlinear channel dynamics may be used to demonstrate contradictory requirements on a plant model faced in a model based design. Chosen predictive disturbance observer based filtered PI control design is focused on achieving ideal shapes of the transient responses at the input and output, which is achieved by shaping transients of simple P control and of the reconstructed input disturbance. Thereby, the paper proposes new learning scenario with higher order learning outcomes that are based on active experimentation supported by an expository learning, testing and discussions.