Teaching control system design through mechatronics: academic and industrial perspectives

The present approach to teaching control system design as a stand-alone course offered late in the undergraduate curriculum, with little discussion of hardware, implementation, or integration through design, is ineffective in preparing students for engineering practice. Control systems must be integrated into the design from the beginning and not be simply after-thought add-ons. Based on the authors' extensive experience teaching mechatronics to university students and professional engineers, an integrated mechatronic approach to teaching controls is proposed. This approach will seriously address the deficiencies in the present-day skills of working professionals, as observed by the authors in teaching professional engineering workshops. These deficiencies are a direct result of how we presently teach controls and related topics.