English

Once every semester

Automatic control doctoral students with research projects that involve the development of cyber-physical control systems rely to a large extent on research engineers to progress their research. This course is aimed at making the students comfortable with the basics of experiment-driven design processes, to increase their sense of project ownership, and also independence. They will also learn methods and skills that are highly valued both within and outside of academia.

The course is a project course, supervised by a department or external research engineer. During the course, students work individually, or in pairs. They plan, design, evaluate, and improve an experimental setup, that is preferably motivated by their doctoral research project. This motivates the following course contents:

* Discussion with research engineer, literature search, and self-study. The purpose here is to familiarize both with concepts and methods (such as additive manufacturing, PCB CAD, embedded programming environments), and to receive training in reading technical documentation (component datasheets, software documentation, tutorials, manual pages).

* Design of cyber-physical experiment setup. The exact content may vary between projects. In some cases, there can be more emphasis on cyber, in others on physical.

* Implementation. This is carried out under the supervision of a research or R&D engineer and focuses on establishing and focusing good practices when it comes to methods, tools, version management, and documentation.

* Evaluation. The main focus here is to develop critical thinking and a structured approach to fault detection and debugging. Identifying aspects with room for improvements and discussing possible such improvements with the supervising engineer concludes the practical course work.

* plan, design, and evaluate a cyber-physical system under the supervision of a department research engineer or external counterpart.

* have sufficient understanding to make sound design choices, both on the conceptual (high) and component (low) level.

* know about different cyber-physical and/or embedded prototyping modalities and develop an understanding for when they are suitable.

* be able to rapidly produce research prototypes using suitable techniques such as PCB CAD, additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques, embedded system design and programming.

* be able to evaluate, debug and iteratively improve research prototypes.

* be able to communicate on the design process orally, both with research engineers and non-technical academic personnel.

* document the project in a suitable version-managed a way that makes it possible to track progress, and to reproduce results.

* demonstrate a holistic approach to experimental prototype design and evaluation.

* take a critical stance when it comes to evaluation, and a methodical one when it comes to debugging.

* view the prototyping as part of a research project rather than a means of its own.

* continuously revise the development process to put effort where it is most beneficial for moving it forward.

Project

Written report

Seminars given by participants

The course is examined through a seminar and a written report. The seminar is aimed at fellow doctoral students at the department, and should preferably also provide information on the context in which the research setup will be used. The purpose of the written report is to serve as complementing documentation to code, drawings, and version management system documentation. Someone with the competence of the supervising research engineer should be able to produce a copy of the setup based solely on the report and the aforementioned documentation.

Examination is conducted by the course responsible teacher (associate lecturer, lecturer, professor) at the department of Automatic Control.

Failed, pass

The prerequisites coincide with the admission requirements for doctoral studies in automatic control.

The course is offered based on department or external research or R&D engineer availability for supervision.

 

Course literature comprises textbooks and tutorials on applicable aspects of rapid prototyping within electronics, solid manufacturing, and, real-time systems. The scope is too broad and varied between projects to provide an explicit listing. Reading references will be established by the course responsible and each participant.

FRT275F

2022-06-14

Professor Thomas Johansson