Development and Outcomes of Teaching PID Control in Classroom with Hands on Learning Experience

Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control systems are a fundamental building block of classical and modern control systems. They have been used in the majority of industrial applications from chemical process control, mechanical process control, electro-mechanical process control, aerospace systems control to electrical drive control and power converter control. Understanding these control systems and having the capability to design and implementing them are paramount to an engineer. This paper presents the development and outcomes of a new teaching PID control in a university laboratory, which provides a hands-on learning experience with a low-cost thermal rig for design and implementation of the control systems. The class had 180 undergraduate and postgraduate students who came from the fields of electrical, electronic, communication, mechanical, and aerospace engineering. The teaching outcomes demonstrate improved student capability in using knowledge from theories/lectures to create a real hardware-based control system. Student feedback about laboratory activities was very positive which is strong evidence for improving teaching and learning quality.