Industrial control

Learning goals

• evaluate a solution for an industrial control problem and explain the relevance of programmable systems for these problems

Problem

Fig. 7 25 Oct. 1969 - Commander of the Apollo 12 lunar landing mission, sits in the cockpit of a Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) during a lunar simulation flight at Ellington Air Force Base.
Public domain. By NASA Johnson Space Center. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Various control systems

Mechanical ⚙️

Fig. 8 Steam engine using a centrifugal governor
CC BY-SA 3.0. By Panther. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Electronic 💻

Fig. 9 A chip on an Arduino board
Public domain. By DustyDingo. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Manual 🤹🏼

Fig. 10 Human hands on a car steering wheel
CC BY 2.0. By Vernon Chan. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Table 1 Comparison of three control methods

Type	Pro 👍	Con 👎
Mechanical ⚙️	simple, reliable	bulky, complex systems not feasible
Electronic 💻	flexibility through programmability (computers), small	complex, reliability
Manual 🤹	very flexible, can cope with an unknown environment	costly, unreliable for repetitive tasks

Regardless of the method, we use typically electrical wires and electronics to connect all systems together.

Activity 2

As an engineer in the R&D department of the space agency you are designing the following subsystems of a lunar lander:

1. a sensor for pointing the antenna to the world 📡

2. subsystem for traveling from space to moon’s proximity

3. subsystem for landing on the moon 🛬

For these scenarios:

1. pick one control method

2. explain with an example how electronics (and computers) can help in this scenario

Steps:

1. 2 min Individual work

2. 2 min Discuss with your partner

3. 1 min Write down your result and keywords so that you can explain that later

4. We will discuss one solution together

From now on we assume that we use a programmable electronic system to solve our problem.