Control Systems and Dynamics
Introduction to Controls Teaching Lab
Quanser has been the world leader in controls and dynamics educational experiences for over 30 years. Hands-on controls lab experiences are a critical component of every undergraduate student’s engineering education.
Quanser’s Introduction to Controls Teaching Lab, part of the Controls & Dynamics Lab, empowers educators by providing turn-key experiences consisting of hardware, software, digital twins, instructor resources and an interactive student mobile textbook app for controls.
Qube-Servo 3
The quickest path to practical controls
The Qube Servo 3 is the fastest and most efficient way to bring modern, hands-on learning experiences into your Control Systems course. The system is equipped with a high-quality direct-drive brushed DC motor, two encoders, an internal data acquisition system, and an amplifier. Connect with USB to a Windows PC using MATLAB Simulink or Python.
Aero 2
Reconfigurable dual-rotor aerospace experiment for controls education and research
The Aero 2 allows you to teach and research more control systems courses and topics than any other solution on the market. Equipped with a collection of high-fidelity sensors, our traditional open-architecture software, and reconfigurable dynamic properties, the Aero 2 can be used to teach almost all undergraduate control systems topics and for a variety of research applications.
QLabs Virtual Aero 2
Virtual Platform for distance and blended undergraduate aerospace and controls courses
QLabs Virtual Aero 2 is a fully instrumented, dynamically accurate virtual twin of an Aero 2 system. It behaves in the same way as the physical hardware and can be measured and controlled using MATLAB® Simulink® and other development environments. QLabs Virtual Aero 2 can enrich your lectures and activities in traditional labs, or bring credible, authentic model-based lab experiences into your distance and blended aerospace and control systems course.
QLabs Virtual Aero 2 is available as a 12-month multi-seat subscription. The platform is compatible with the physical Aero 2 curriculum which covers concepts including modeling, system identification, attitude and speed control, PID control, gain scheduling, state-feedback control, coupled dynamics, and Kalman filtering.
Rotary Servo Base Unit
Foundational modular control experiment
The Rotary Servo Base Unit is the fundamental element of the Quanser Rotary Control family. It is ideally suited to introduce basic control concepts and theories on an easy-to-use and intuitive platform.
Use it on its own to perform several experiments or expand the scope of this unit by adding on other modules to teach an even wider range of control concepts. Instructors can thus expose students to a variety of rotary control challenges for a minimal investment. Real-world applications of the rotary servomotor include the autofocus feature in modern cameras, cruise control in automobiles, and servo actuation in aerospace.
QLabs Virtual Rotary Servo
Virtual platform for distance and blended undergraduate control systems courses
QLabs Virtual Rotary Servo is a fully instrumented, dynamically accurate digital twin of a classic Rotary Servo Base Unit system. It behaves in the same way as the physical hardware and can be measured and controlled using MATLAB®/Simulink® and other development environments. With QLabs Virtual Rotary Servo, you can enrich your lectures and activities in traditional labs, or bring credible, authentic model-based lab experiences into your distance and online control systems course.
QLabs Virtual Rotary Servo is available as a 12-month, multi-seat subscription. The platform is compatible with the physical Rotary Servo Base Unit curriculum, which covers modeling, position, and speed control topics.
Ball and Beam
Introduce unstable closed loop system control concepts
The Ball and Beam module is ideal to introduce various control concepts related to unstable closed-loop systems. You can use it to demonstrate real-world control challenges such as aircraft roll control. The Ball and Beam module attaches to the Rotary Servo Base Unit.
QLabs Virtual Ball and Beam
Virtual platform for distance and blended undergraduate control systems courses
QLabs Virtual Ball and Beam is a fully instrumented, dynamically accurate digital twin of the Quanser Ball and Beam system. It behaves in the same way as the physical hardware and can be measured and controlled using MATLAB®/Simulink® and other development environments. With QLabs Virtual Ball and Beam, you can enrich your lectures and activities in traditional labs, or bring credible, authentic model-based lab experiences into your distance and online control systems course.
QLabs Virtual Ball and Beam is available as a 12-month, multi-seat subscription. The platform is compatible with the physical Ball and Beam curriculum, which covers various modeling and control topics.
Rotary Inverted Pendulum
A classic modeling and control systems experiment
The Rotary Inverted Pendulum module attaches to the Rotary Servo Base Unit, expanding the mechatronics and controls topics that can be taught. The pendulum module challenges students to not only model and control a pendulum, but also to learn about hybrid control systems by tuning a swing-up control system. In addition to teaching intermediate control concepts, the Rotary Inverted Pendulum can be used for research in various areas, including fuzzy control.
Coupled Tanks
Reconfiguring modeling and control experiment
The Coupled Tanks system is a process control experiment ideal for teaching and research of control topics related to liquid level control.
QLabs Virtual Coupled Tanks
Virtual platform for distance and blended undergraduate control systems courses
QLabs Virtual Coupled Tanks is a fully instrumented, dynamically accurate digital twin of a Quanser Coupled Tanks system. It behaves in the same way as the physical hardware and can be measured and controlled using MATLAB®/Simulink® and other development environments. With QLabs Coupled Tanks, you can enrich your lectures and activities in traditional labs, or bring credible, authentic model-based lab experiences into your distance and online process control course.
QLabs Virtual Coupled Tanks is available as a 12-month, multi-seat subscription. The platform is compatible with the physical Coupled Tanks curriculum, which covers various modeling and control topics.
Active Suspension
Advanced platform mass-spring-damper modeling and control
The Active Suspension experiment can be used for teaching and research based on the technology that has brought a new generation of vehicles to life. Active suspension technology is used in the automotive industry to continuously control the vertical movement of the vehicle wheel using an actively controlled actuator placed on the suspension axis. Similar technologies have also been used in train bogies to improve the curving behaviour of the train and the acceleration perceived by the passenger. The versatile platform can also be used to teach mass-spring-damper modelling and control at a fundamental level, as well as applications of IMU measurement and processing.
About Quanser’s Control Systems and Dynamics Lab
The Quanser Controls and Dynamics Lab is the culmination of our decades of experience working with academic programs worldwide to develop exciting learning experiences and cutting-edge research. The lab is a complete collection of teaching and research platforms, software, resources, and digital twins that can take a controls lab from an empty room to a fully commissioned lab in hours instead of weeks or months.
Scaffolding Learning in a Controls and Dynamics Lab
A scaffolded progression of skills activities starts with the Qube-Servo 3 servomotor as a linear open-architecture system. The Qube-Servo 3 and our collection of over 30 lab activities introduce students to modelling, control design, analysis, and tuning fundamentals. From there, instructors can increase the complexity of the dynamic system by introducing the Aero 2 platform, which smoothly transitions students to more advanced topics such as observer design and cascade control. The versatility of these two platforms, combined with our customizable courseware and open-architecture design, equip a Controls and Dynamics Lab with the software, hardware, and courseware needed to provide essential hands-on learning experiences to students in any combination of control systems courses.
Enhancing Control System Development with QUARC and Python Libraries
To further expand the versatility of the lab platforms, the QUARC real-time control software for MATLAB Simulink and our Quanser APIs are included to ensure that students and researchers can develop and deploy controllers using several languages. The QUARC libraries that are included in the QUARC package and our academic resource libraries for Python further accelerate the development cycle to make testing and validation quicker and easier than would be possible with standard libraries and tools.
Enhancing Learning with High-Fidelity Digital Twins
To further expand the versatility, accessibility, and experiences that are available as part of the Controls and Dynamics Lab, each lab comes with a set of high-fidelity digital twins that give students and researchers the ability to work with virtual hardware platforms off-campus in almost the same way they would work with the real systems. This opens up a wide variety of options for students to spend more time exploring the algorithms they’re developing, tuning and validating their approaches, modeling different dynamic systems, and comparing the performance of their controllers on other types of systems.
Experience Controls: A Comprehensive Digital Textbook for Enhanced Learning
To complete the turn-key teaching studio resources, our digital textbook Experience Controls perfectly complements the Qube Teaching Studio with dozens of interactive examples of controllers at work, theoretical concept review sections, test your understanding questions, and hundreds of PowerPoint slides and resources for instructors. We created the Experience Controls mobile textbook to offer students a more interactive and hands-on way to bring traditional textbook control system concepts to life. With over sixteen thousand downloads of Experience Controls, we are confident when combined with our physical and virtual platforms, the Qube Teaching Studio offers an unparalleled learning experience for students at all levels.