Control Systems Laboratory 2022/2023

The course Laboratorio di automatica provides basic elements about the topics: 

• Physical systems modelling
• Arduino and Processing 
• Simulink/MATLAB (or Scilab/Xcos) and Maxima 

The basic idea consists in: 

• showing how all physical (and artificial) phenomena evolving in time with a "history" can be described by differential or difference equations, or a mix of both (hybrid systems);
• introducing the idea of the control chain "sensor - control algorithm - actuator". 

In order to substantiate the first idea, after providing some simple elements about modelling of simple (natural and artificial) systems, it is shown how to simulate their behavior by numerical computational software (MATLAB/Simulink or Scilab/Xcos) and how to formally manipulate their equations by symbolic computational software (Maxima). 

In order to substantiate the second idea, it is shown how to interface the Arduino board to (analog and digital) sensors, actuators (including cc motors, stepper motors, servo motors), and the communication between Arduino and a personal computer is introduced via simple graphical interfaces developed in Processing.