Lab Development in Automatic Control
Labutveckling i reglerteknik

FRT175F, 7.5 credits

Valid from: Autumn 2017
Decided by: Professor Thomas Johansson
Date of establishment: 2017-08-16

General Information

Division: Automatic Control
Course type: Third-cycle course
Teaching language: English

Aim

The purpose of the course is to introduce the doctoral students to practical engineering problems with a strong automatic control emphasis, by letting them develop processes, software and pedagogic material for the course lab of the department.

Goals

Knowledge and Understanding

For a passing grade the doctoral student must

• have obtained engineering knowledge within areas relevant to the chosen project, to a sufficient degree for its completion. This is enabled through close collaboration with the department’s research engineers.
• have developed an understanding for practical engineering problems. Foremost, the participant shall have developed an understanding of possibilities and limitations of the approaches and methods used within the project.

Competences and Skills

For a passing grade the doctoral student must

• be able to demonstrate to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical context, through the development of lab processes and/or related software and pedagogic material.
• independently, but with some help from the department’s research engineers, be able to obtain knowledge relevant for the chosen project.
• have developed and demonstrated her/his group work ability. Particular emphasis will be put on the ability to divide the project into activities, which are distributed among the group members, and to synthesize their results into a functional entity.

Course Contents

The potential course content has a broad span: embedded systems, real-time OS, analog electrics, rapid prototyping using, for example, 3D-printing, pedagogic aspects, man-machine interface. The participants will focus on one or several of these areas, depending on what is relevant for their project.

Course Literature

Choice of course literature is decided by the topics of the individual projects.

Instruction Details

Type of instruction: Project. The course will be conducted through projects within groups of 2-3 doctoral students. Collaboration between groups to approach larger challenges is encouraged. The course responsible coordinates the groups and follows up progress of the groups. The departments' research engineers act as mentors, and help the participants acquire practical skills.

Examination Details

Examination format: Miscellaneous. Upon course start, the doctoral students form smaller project groups. Each project group outlines a specification document for the process/software/pedagogic material to be developed. This specification is reviewed by the other groups, as well as the course responsible. At the end of the course, the specification document is followed up by the other groups, and the course responsible. To pass, the group participants must either a) have fulfilled the stipulated specifications, or b) be able to have a reflecting discussion with the course responsible regarding why some of the specifications could not be met.
Grading scale: Failed, pass
Examiner:

Admission Details

Course Occasion Information

Contact and Other Information

Course coordinators:
Web page: https://www.control.lth.se/Education/DoctorateProgram/lab-development.html