PROGRAMMING FROM THE GROUND UP IN CONTROLS LABORATORIES USING GRAPHICAL PROGRAMMING

This paper describes a recent, innovative educational approach taken at the University of Colorado for teaching a senior-level undergraduate controls course. By using software written in a graphical programming language (in this case LabVIEW™) to control the hardware, the students were able to do all the programming themselves. The advantages of this approach over “canned” lab approaches are many. The students feel more responsible for the final product and they are able to apply control techniques learned in class in a more fundamentally creative way. We present some anecdotal evidence from the class taught in Autumn term, 2005, that suggests that students will often use tools from beyond the scope of the class to solve problems in creative and occasionally unexpected ways.