For the past three months, I coached a FIRST Lego League team. In this competition kids aged 9 to 14 design, build, and program an autonomous Lego Mindstorms robot, then compete on a table-top playing field at a tournament. Teams also...
Some of the most frequently asked questions we get when introducing Quanser systems are “can the user modify the controller?” and “can I access the motor?” The answer to both of them is YES. One of the main advantages of...
With IoT, AI, machine learning and other highly technical terms entering the mainstream vocabulary, engineering careers become more and more attractive for the new generation. The challenge for the engineering schools and departments now is to motivate these young students...
In the first post of our series we focused on structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. We shared examples of how our Shake Table systems are used in teaching and research labs around the world. In this post, let's look closer...
One of the best parts of my job as an R&D engineer at Quanser is meeting with our customers and learning how they use our systems in their teaching labs or for their research. Recently, I visited the Autonomous Vehicles...
In the previous "intermediate control" blog post series, we highlighted the Ball and Beam and Magnetic Levitation systems as a great way to introduce the advanced control concepts without requiring students to use state-space techniques. Another great plant to use...
For some twenty years, Quanser Shake Tables are helping civil engineering students grasp complex concepts of structural dynamics and earthquake engineering more quickly and thoroughly. Engaging, hands-on experiments allow them to leap past dry theory and 'experience' an earthquake in...
When attending this year's American Control Conference (ACC), one of the special sessions caught my attention. The National Science Foundation (NSF) invited junior faculty and researchers to a presentation titled “Getting Funded by NSF: Proposal Preparation and the Merit Review Process”...
In introductory control system courses, the analysis is typically done in the S-domain using transfer functions, and the advanced control courses introduce students to the state-space modeling and state-feedback control techniques. But quite often, instructors are caught in the mid-range...
In the previous blog post, we introduced the computation and communication software architecture of the Autonomous Vehicles Research Studio and showed how it could be applied in a swarm configuration. From homogeneous to heterogeneous vehicles with the same control architecture...
