Dynamic Systems Take Home Laboratory

Abstract

Laboratory experiments are important for engineering students to acquire hands-on experience and reinforce theoretical concepts. Current issues with lab experiments are that they take up space and can be expensive. Take Home Labs is a series of inexpensive experiments that students can perform at home. The increasing popularity of microcontrollers and 3-D printing makes it possible for the cost of the Take Home Labs to be less than the cost of a textbook. The software used for Take Home Labs is MATLAB/Simulink, which is available to most students at universities. These experiments were first introduced in the Dynamic Systems course in the fall of 2015. This thesis discusses the changes made to the experiments and why, based on the results from 2015. The work in this thesis also focuses on the assessment of the experiments in Dynamic Systems course in the fall of 2017. A web based survey question and answer platform called Piazza was used for the assessment. A new lab, Optimal State Feedback Control of a Rotary Flexible Link, was also created in this thesis.