Quanser Engineering Blog - Your Comments Welcomed!

Quanser Solutions Address the Future of Engineering Education at ASEE 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:48:00 +0000

The undergraduate engineering lab of the future should represent a vast improvement over most of the undergraduate labs operating today. It should offer an exciting, hands-on experience perfectly attuned to the imaginations of today’s video game generation of engineering students. The good news is, that lab exists – and you can see it at the upcoming ASEE 2013 Conference June 23 – June 26 in Atlanta, Georgia.

See the Undergraduate Lab of the Future, plus the new, low cost, self-contained QUBE-Servo Rotary Servo Experiment and more by visiting the Quanser Innovation Hub and the Quanser booth at ASEE 2013.

Visit the Innovation Hub and Quanser’s Undergraduate Lab of the Future

The next evolution of Quanser’s immersive visualization application – a multi-participant, aerial chase challenge – is designed to captivate students with its game-style approach to learning, while maintaining the rigor of engineering theory. Come by, take control of this hands-on lab concept and experience its teaching capability for yourself.

A 20 minute interactive presentation and demonstration at the Exhibit Hall:

Sunday, June 23, 6:30 pm
Monday, June 24, 11 am, 1:30 pm, 4 pm
Tuesday, June 25: 10 am, 1 pm

See the New QUBE™-Servo Demo at the Quanser Booth

Along with the lab of the future, Quanser is presenting a number of forward-looking ideas and solutions, including our new QUBE-Servo, a low cost, self-contained, controls teaching platform for undergraduate labs. Stop by the Quanser booth for a live demo and learn how you can build a world-class multi-station lab for under $20K.

Continuously, Booth 553

Hear Dr. Tom Lee and Industry Experts Discuss “The Flipped Classroom”
A panel of industry experts, including Dr. Tom Lee, Chief Education Officer, Quanser, will discuss specific models of innovation that support this new style of learning in engineering courses. This session is not to be missed.
Tuesday, June 25, 2:15 pm - 3:45 pm, Room A307

Attend the National Instruments-Quanser Teaching Solutions Workshop

This hands-on workshop will introduce you to the NI-Quanser education platform, including hardware, software and courseware that enable you to teach control concepts in a real-world context. If you use NI LabVIEW™ system design software, you should attend this workshop.
Wednesday, June 26: 10 am - 11 am & 2 pm - 3 pm, Room A312

We hope you're able to attend the 2013 ASEE Conference. We’re looking forward to sharing with you our latest initiatives that promote effective, efficient learning.

Student-developed Driver Assistance Controls Reveal Students’ Creativity and Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:04:00 +0000

Just as we threw out a challenge to students at the University of New Mexico to build a better flight simulator, we recently challenged some University of Toronto graduate students to use the Quanser immersive 3D environment and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) vehicle simulation to design and test advanced driver assistance algorithms.

We did so for two reasons. First, we believe that hands-on learning using real hardware and immersive visualizations allows students to test and refine their otherwise “perfect” theoretical solutions in a real-world or near real-world context. Second, the design and integration of driver assistance systems through massive sensor fusion has been identified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as one of the grand challenges for control. By making this challenge so timely and relevant, we gave the students valuable exposure to the kinds of engineering problems they might encounter in their future careers.

We began by providing students with the basic platform and walking them through some fundamental control system labs to get them familiar with the platform. Then we asked them to think up some driver assistance challenges of their own and apply the collective engineering skills they’ve learned to a creative and relevant project. We didn’t hand-hold; we tried to get the students to work through the research, design and development themselves.

The students implemented some truly creative systems while following the recommended Quanser method throughout their development lifecycle from preliminary mathematical modeling, through simulation, HIL testing, and final deployment. Here are some of the most noteworthy results.

Car Following and Obstacle Avoidance:

One team chose to develop a series of algorithms to replicate a particular driving challenge, namely tracking and systematically passing a target vehicle while simultaneously avoiding randomly placed obstacles. This objective introduced several interesting control challenges and approaches including hybrid control, artificial potential field obstacle avoidance, state-feedback control, and the control of a steered vehicle.

Visualization provided by the immersive 3D environment gave students an intuitive sense of worked and what didn’t. This facilitated their development of algorithms that allowed one car to track and pass a target vehicle, while avoiding randomly place obstacles.

Once again, the students followed a systematic design process which began with the development of a mathematical model and control design, continued with the validation of their algorithms in simulation, before implementation on the test platform with actual servomotors as HIL components. Overall the students gained experience working on algorithms and techniques that have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry. The feedback we received from the students indicated their use of the visualization tool helped them implement their mathematical models and see what worked and what didn’t.

Forward and Reverse Path Tracking with a Front-Wheel Steered Bicycle Model:

This team decided to design and compare controls systems for autonomous forward and reverse driving. Their emphasis was on the development of an accurate non-linear vehicle model to replicate a bicycle tracking an arbitrary path. The students were able to successfully implement their algorithms, and show some very impressive results and performance.

Students discovered that developing algorithms with dynamic simulation models and hardware in the loop components helped to better predict controller performance once implemented in reality.

More important than their results, however, were their experiences working through the design process itself. The students made several critical observations including the need for accurate dynamic models for preliminary simulations, and HIL components when designing and testing control systems. The students remarked in their final report that, “Developing with these additions (e.g. dynamics, HIL) in mind can help to reduce the time required to tune real controllers once implemented, and can help to better predict the performance of a controller once implemented in reality. This is important because a controller might show very promising performance in a kinematic simulation without HIL, but performs very poorly even when tuned, once implemented on a real system.”

Success in engineering is only achieved when a challenge is met in theory AND in practice. The algorithms being designed have to work in the real world. To that end, the more we can bring engineering labs and projects into the real world through hands-on experiments, visualization and hardware-in-the-loop testing, the richer and more industry-relevant that education will be. That has been and always will be Quanser’s main focus.

Flexible QUBE-Servo Courseware Designed To Support Different Controls Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:22:00 +0000

Modern, modular, flexible – that’s a simple, three word summary of the new generation courseware now available for the new QUBE-Servo rotary servo experiment.

From this courseware, professors can take the teaching materials they need, then mix and match them to support the controls topics they’re addressing in their individual courses.

The new QUBE-Servo Rotary Servo Experiment comes with a new generation of mix and match, rich media courseware for easy integration into professors' specific controls courses.

Such flexibility means professors aren’t tied to any predetermined teaching sequence. They can teach their controls courses their way. All they have to do is select any of the provided QUBE-Servo experiments and insert it anywhere within their existing controls course.

The courseware is ABET-aligned and come in rich, multiple formats so the relevant materials can be easily added to a professor’s course notes and lectures. Also included is a convenient textbook mapping guide that allows professors to match control topics to specific chapters from the most popular control engineering textbooks.

All these features mean professors can bring richer teaching material to their controls courses, while also saving themselves valuable prep time. Win, win!

To learn more about the QUBE-Servo’s new courseware, watch the video.

Help Us Turn a Bicycle Into a Research Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:50:00 +0000

What does a bicycle have to do with engineering a better world? When someone gets on one and rides miles and miles to raise money to conduct important research, everything.

On Saturday, June 8^th and Sunday, June 9^th, Quanser CEO Paul Gilbert will strap on his helmet, get on his well-used road bike and go on the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer (ERCC) in Toronto, Canada. He and his ERCC Ride teammates are hoping to raise over $64,000 in support of cancer research at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, one of the five leading cancer research centres in the world.

Research tools like this are being used by Quanser CEO Paul Gilbert, his teammates and thousands of people across Canada as they seek to raise funds for cancer research through the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer. Follow the links to see how you can get involved.

If you live in Canada, you too may wish to take part in the ERCC Ride. It’s taking place on selected weekends in June in major communities all across the country. Should you prefer to help engineer a better world and "ride" with Paul and his teammates by supporting their fundraising efforts, you are welcome to do so.

To find out more about the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer and Paul's team’s goals, follow the links and help Paul turn a bicycle into an important research tool.

Learn How Quanser Control Platforms Help Researchers Validate Their Research at ACC 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:13:00 +0000

If you are planning to attend this year’s American Control Conference in Washington, D.C., later this month, we invite you to visit Quanser at Booth 19. It will be an excellent opportunity to talk to one of our representatives about your research and how you can validate your theoretical findings using Quanser systems.

The Quanser booth attracted a wide range of researchers at last year's American Control Conference in Montreal, Canada.

You can learn about the most trusted platforms for control systems research and teaching– over 80 high-precision plants that cover an extensive range of applications and control research topics, including nonlinear control, adaptive control, robust control, optimal control, intelligent control and system identification.

More than 2500 universities around the world already rely on Quanser solutions because of their precision, repeatable dynamics, open architecture and modular design. Ultimately, these solutions allow researchers like you to focus more time and resources on core research instead of building and maintaining “do-it-yourself” test beds.

As the world leader in developing control systems plants for research and education, Quanser is well-positioned to help you validate your research in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Please visit us at Booth 19 to discuss your research needs and how Quanser can assist you in meeting them.

Student-developed Flight Simulator Aims to Take Controls Education to New Heights

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:16:00 +0000

In the wake of the overwhelmingly positive response by students to the Quanser Driving Simulator and the remarkable ability of this immersive 3D environment and simulation to provide an engaging platform for learning control theory, Quanser took the opportunity to go to the next level. To really emphasize the unique potential that the platform has to engage students in control systems design and development from the ground up, we decided to hand off the project to senior design students at the University of New Mexico.

The Challenge: Create a high level, engaging, hands-on platform to teach helicopter flight control

The students were asked to help Quanser innovate the way flight control is taught. They were tasked to design an educational platform that is industrially relevant, exciting and engaging; utilizes Hardware-in-the-Loop components; and relates to classic engineering concepts and practices.

We provided them with several Quanser tools and devices, including our 2 DOF Helicopter and Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) Toolkit with the Quanser 3D Viewer visualization software. Quanser engineers then mentored the team throughout the design process.

The Quanser 2 DOF Helicopter hardware is integrated with the on-screen simulation
as part of the competition-oriented video game that helps students gain familiarity
with the simulation and its controls.

The Solution: The Quanser 3D helicopter flight simulator takes flight

The students aimed to design a platform that was as pedagogically rigorous as it was engaging. This was important because a great many game-style educational tools are dismissed by serious students. They also knew that the resulting 3D helicopter visualization had to be immersive and realistic, yet simple to control.

To get them off to a proper start, Quanser engineers outlined key success criteria. The first requirement was hardware-in-the-loop components, including the Quanser 2 DOF Helicopter. The 2 DOF Helicopter combined realistic model dynamics and ease of use, and helped ensure the undergraduate students had a serious and industrially-relevant learning experience.

For the second requirement, the capstone team had to create a repeatable, close-loop course for the virtual helicopter to follow that would allow students to develop and test the low level control systems and the high level navigation algorithms. Once these criteria were set, the students went to work on design and development, consulting with Quanser engineers and their instructors when necessary.

The students went one step further and added complexity to their challenge by implementing an exciting helicopter-and-car chase capability. This was achieved by integrating code from the Quanser Driving Simulator.

The Project Outcome: An innovative, high-flying, hands-on controls learning experience

Speaking for the UNM capstone team, Kurt Hollowell summed up their experience. “The Quanser (RCP) Toolkit gave us the functionality to control the helicopter at a basic level through LabVIEW™. We were able to change various inputs to the helicopter, as well as view helicopter state outputs such as current pitch and yaw readings, changes over time, and so on.

“Quanser’s visualization software allowed us to easily work with the models within our simulation. We were able to import, scale, and change the models as needed all in one place, which seamlessly integrated with the rest of our system. Ultimately, the toolset gave us the power to perform quick iterations during the development of our project."

The capstone project student team from the University of New Mexico includes (left to right) Edgar Chavez (CE), Mitch Castillo (EE), Davie Torres (EE), and Kurt Hollowell (CE).

As a platform for control systems education, the 2 DOF helicopter system and the simulation provided by the UNM capstone students now facilitates several flight scenarios for future users, including free flying over a never-ending environment, flying through ring courses, pursuing a car on the ground, and more. Overall, the system gives control systems and engineering students the opportunity to have a realistic and engaging hands-on learning experience.

The development of a complete courseware offering by these 4th year engineering students was accomplished in only 7 months, a testament to the effectiveness of the Quanser rapid control prototyping tools, the design process and the abilities of the students. We believe the successful completion of this capstone project will lead to a vivid new way to bring control theory to life in the lab. It has already enhanced the students’ ability to succeed in their academic and industrial careers.

A Strong Belief In Hands-On Engineering Brings Quanser and FIRST Together Again

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:13:00 +0000

One of our favourite outreach programs is the annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Every year we get involved and participate as individual mentors, judges, and overall as a corporate sponsor.

Why? We agree wholeheartedly with their mission: to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting, mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills.

Last month Dr. Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer, blogged about his recent experience as a FIRST judge advisor, saying it renewed his faith in the younger generation’s inquisitive spirit and sheer engineering skills. Now two Quanser engineers, Peter Martin and Gilbert Lai, talk about their experiences as FIRST mentors this year. Peter has helped mentor the St. Robert Catholic High School team in Thornhill, Ontario for the past two years and Gilbert, who has just joined Quanser, has been mentoring the St. Mildred’s-LightbournGirls School team in Oakville, Ontario for the past three years. Peter and Gilbert recently got together to discuss their mentoring experiences.

Q: Before we start, what was the FIRST challenge this year?

Peter: As always, FIRST has an individual component and a three-team alliance component. Individual school teams competed in building and controlling robots that shot Frisbees into targeted openings for individual awards, which was a lot of fun. The three-team alliances were formed at the competition to cooperate as a team to achieve the highest possible team score based on their frisbee shooting abilities plus a special challenge in which the robots had to climb a pyramid.

Quanser's Peter Martin found the students he mentored at St. Robert High School were quite adept at building and programming their robot. He helped them stay simple and follow a well-thought out design and development process.

Q: Outline how you mentored your particular school.

Gilbert: St. Mildred’s had been in the FIRST competition for many years and I’ve been mentoring them for the past three. The first thing to note about the St. Mildred girls is that they are very quick learners. They went from being unsure how to assess a problem and map it out, to identifying and solving problems on their own, without me. Basically I helped them learn critical thinking, problem solving and project management skills. But their other mentors and I all agree that the girls taught us much more than we taught them. They already had advanced soft skills in working together as a team and seeking consensus for decision-making.

That helped as they overcame some big challenges. The girls built their robot in spite of significant technical limitations. The school doesn’t have a dedicated workshop and the girls had to improvise and work around that. It was inspiring and an eyeopener for me. They outperformed all my expectations.

Peter: This was only the second year that St. Robert entered a team and my second year helping to mentor them. So there were some significant differences in our experiences. For one thing, there’s a great machine shop at St. Robert, so we didn’t have that problem.

Much of what I did was help the St. Robert team establish the teamwork and organizational skills that St. Mildred’s excelled at. I helped them stay simple and follow a design and development process. They learned to break down the project into sub-challenges to build the individual robot components, to be rigorous about documentation and passing along skills to new team members. They also started doing CAD design before bringing everything together to integrate all the parts onto the whole.

I expected to be heavily involved in helping them with software programming, but they often accomplished their work in LabVIEW and Java before I even got there; they just did it themselves. Quite often I found they didn’t need me. They took ownership for the project and plowed ahead on their own.

As mentor for St. Mildred's School FIRST Robotics team, Gilbert Lai found the students to possess remarkable ability to work together as a team. He was struck by how quickly they learned to ask the right questions and assumed complete ownership of their project.

Q: What did the students get out of their involvement with FIRST?

Gilbert: At St. Mildred’s, the students matured very quickly. They went from not knowing what they didn’t know to identifying a problem, to finding the right tool or person to address it. They learned what questions to ask to advance a project. And they took complete ownership of the project; even the younger students were eventually unafraid to be involved, by getting their hands on the power tools and driving the robots around for testing and competition.

Peter: This was a real coming of age year for the St. Robert team. They encountered a lot more technical challenges than in years past and that was good, because they learned what to do when things don’t go according to plan. So this was excellent real-world engineering experience, I think. Overall they also learned how to do engineering as opposed to just doing exercises on paper. They applied their skills to actually build something that was supposed to work. They used wrenches and power drills to put parts together. And they learned why we test things and how to refine things before we get to the finished product. Students coming out of FIRST know it all, everything from using a screwdriver to the specifics of sensor integration.

Q: Why does Quanser partner with FIRST?

Peter: We’re passionate about engineering and want to share that passion with students no matter what their age. Quanser exists to advance engineering education, to help graduate a new generation of engineers with two key abilities: first, to be industry-ready and bring real hands-on engineering experience to the working world; and second, to have the passion and motivation to innovate new solutions to engineering’s grand challenges.

Our methodology says that learning needs to have a hands-on component to be effective. In other words, a good engineering education starts on paper and continues in the workshop. It involves planning and teamwork, motivating applications, software design, hardware-in-the-loop, prototyping, testing and refining. That’s what the kids participating in FIRST are doing, and that’s why we’re excited to partner with FIRST.

Balancing motivation with the rigorous traditions of engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:30:00 +0000

At this year's ECEDHA Annual Conference Spotlights, Quanser's Chief Education Officer Dr. Tom Lee asked an important question: Can engineering theory ever be fun? If you are interested in the answer, watch the 15 min presentation from the conference:

Quanser has been collaborating with leading institutions to develop hands-on labs that offer a more industrially-relevant and motivating experience. A key objective is the balancing of the motivation -- the fun -- with the rigorous traditions of engineering. The core of the solution is a rich mapping of realistic engineering workflows that connects the theory to simulation, to real data and hardware, to design objectives. To make things more interesting, the system introduces the students to the engineering concepts through a highly visual, immersive, video game-like environment while maintaining the conceptual connection to engineering methodology and applications. Dr. Lee illustrated the techniques and presented case studies, including control systems and freshman computing courses.

QUBE-Servo Courseware Can Be Adjusted to Enhance Control Courses

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:49:00 +0000

As regular readers of this blog know, Quanser has just introduced the QUBE™ -Servo, our new, low cost, integrated rotary servo experiment that gives professors a cost-effective way to teach introductory controls. But with the compact QUBE-Servo, we are also introducing a brand new way of delivering the Quanser courseware that accompanies our experiments.

This new way involves a modular and topic-oriented approach that acknowledges that every professor’s controls course is different. It allows a professor to select any experiment within the provided courseware that they find relevant to the control topic they’re teaching, and insert it anywhere within their existing controls course. Instead of tying a professor to a prescribed path where one experiment must follow another in a predetermined sequence, the QUBE-Servo’s modular courseware gives professors the opportunity to enhance their courseware to best suit their individual course and their students. Of course, professors still have the option of teaching the experiments in sequence pre-defined by Quanser if they wish.

New Application Lab Improves the Learning Experience

A special feature of the courseware is an application lab, a segment that applies a control topic students have learned to a real-life control application. In this way the theory they studied will come to life as a real-world system they can relate to. For example, once students have progressed through a lab sequence centred around speed control, they can apply their new skills to the problem of automotive cruise control. This application gives students an immediate appreciation for the relevance of the topics and methods that they are studying.

Diverse Teaching Materials and Rich Media Enhance Courses and Reduce Prep Time

The ABET-aligned courseware includes a wealth of teaching material: QUBE-Servo control experiments with theoretical and practical hands-on components, mathematical system models, lecture slides, ABET assessment and a courseware outline, to assist professors in adapting the courseware to professors’ syllabuses and additional content related to engineering education and research.

To save professors prep time and make the QUBE-Servo teaching materials even more convenient to use, we developed a comprehensive textbook mapping guide. It allows professors to match topics within the QUBE-Servo courseware to specific chapters from the most popular control engineering textbooks in use today, such as Control Systems Engineering by Norman S. Nise and Modern Control Engineering by K. Ogata.

The mix and match, rich media QUBE-Servo courseware can be easily accessed
and adapted to professors' individual controls courses.

QUBE-Servo courseware is offered in many popular digital formats such as PDFs, Powerpoint files, Rich Text Format (RTF) files, and LaTeX files. The RTF, LaTeX and Powerpoint files are open, so instructors can simply copy and paste content into their own course notes and lectures.

The low cost QUBE-Servo rotary servo experiment offers engineering educators a smart, cost-effective way to teach controls to undergraduates. Its mix and match, rich media courseware adds to its value. They work together to enhance a professors’ effectiveness, and at the same time demonstrate Quanser’s continuing commitment to offering engineering educators the comprehensive controls solutions their students need.

Download the courseware sample to learn what topics you can teach using the QUBE-Servo experiment.

Helping Students Experience Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:47:00 +0000

National Instruments is well-known for building high quality I/O tools and graphical programming technologies that serve engineers and scientists around the world. Quanser is well-known for its expertise in creating plants, models and controls experiments that engineering students can interact with.

What happens when the two companies put their heads together? Simple. Students "go beyond the equation" and actually experience engineering. Watch as Dave Wilson, National Instruments’ Director of Academic and Corporate Marketing, explains.

New Quanser Staff Member Helps Align Product Development and Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:59:00 +0000

Abdullah Dhooma spends his working day speaking two languages: engineering and marketing. As Quanser’s new Product Marketing Engineer, his specialized “language” skills are employed to co-ordinate communication across different departments and working groups inside and outside the company. He is closely involved with Quanser products at every stage of the development, sales and marketing cycles. Abdullah also acts as a bridge between Quanser and National Instruments as the two companies grow their partnership and offer new instructional and research solutions to academic engineering labs.

Abdullah Dhooma, Quanser's new Product Marketing Engineer, makes a presentation introducing the our newest product, the fully integrated QUBE-Servo Rotary Servo Experiment, during the recent Quanser Distributor Conference.

Abdullah completed a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MBA at Ryerson University. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Canada, and has also earned Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Abdullah joins Quanser with 10 years of experience as a product and business manager at a company responsible for building part of the Canadian weather station of the Phoenix Mars Lander.

A tinkerer by nature, Abdullah was a computer enthusiast and Internet user at a very early age. So his path to becoming an engineer was a logical one. As he puts it, “It’s who I am. I love the problem-solving aspect of engineering.” When he’s not helping to guide the development and marketing of Quanser’s engineering education solutions, he spends his time with his family as well as reading and playing golf.

How QUARC Helps Professors Advance Their Research

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

What is the key advantage that professors get from using QUARC^® rapid control prototyping software in their research? It’s simple - speed. QUARC allows them to accelerate design and achieve their research goals in much less time, whether they’re working in haptics, robotics, unmanned vehicles or other related areas.

The fact is QUARC seamlessly integrates with Simulink^® and takes the traditional design-to-implementation interface toolset to new levels. As a result, researchers experience more functionality and more development flexibility, all geared towards improved real-time testing and performance.

All around the world, academic researchers are using QUARC to quickly turn ideas into prototypes, saving themselves months, and in some cases years, of development time. In today’s time and budget-constrained academic research environment, that’s an advantage of major proportions.

Read on and learn how some professors are advancing their research at a rapid pace by using QUARC.

Design complex control processes with ease

“We develop control algorithms for a rehabilitation robot designed and manufactured by Quanser. The device is designed to help stroke survivors perform upper limb movement therapy exercises. We are especially interested in using robotically-captured records of patients’ motions to accurately measure their motor performance, enabling clinicians to design optimal therapy interventions that will help maximize recovery.

Using QUARC, University of Alberta researcher Matthew Dyck was able to quickly develop control algorithms for a rehabilitation robot designed to help stroke survivors perform upper limb movement therapy exercises. (Photo courtesy of University of Alberta)

Our robot and its associated sensors are programmed, monitored, and controlled entirely through QUARC. QUARC makes it possible for us to design complex control solutions with ease, and enables us to fine-tune those algorithms in real time as they are implemented on physical hardware.

QUARC rapidly accelerates the process of translating an idea into a tangible, functioning prototype. Through its high-level programming environment, QUARC enables engineers to focus on designing innovative solutions rather than troubleshooting programming errors. QUARC’s advanced functionalities have both simplified and supercharged our real-time, hardware-in-the-loop programming and offline simulations.”

- Matthew Dyck, E.I.T., M.Sc. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada

A tremendous help for research in distributed sensing systems

“QUARC's support of TCP/IP has been a tremendous help for our research. It allowed us to develop a distributed sensing system that isn't dependent on expensive I/O hardware or DAQ boards. Further, this allows for safety-critical redundancy when we are doing vehicle control tests.”

- Professor Sean Brennan, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University, USA

Flexibility and ease of development in autonomous flight systems research

“We are using the Quanser Qball to conduct research into a number of areas. First, we are looking at designing cooperative flight and sightline controllers for practical laser wireless power transfer. We are building a laser transceiver to mount on the Qball and a ground-based laser pointer. Another area is using the Qball to demonstrate the effectiveness of nonlinear flight stabilization controllers for constrained flight in atmospheric turbulence. We chose Quanser for our lab for a number of reasons, but primarily because of the flexibility and ease of development provided by QUARC.”

- Professor David Anderson, MAST Lab and Aerospace Science Research Division, University of Glasgow, UK

Gather information quickly

“The computational speed and the communication speed between the Quanser Q8 data acquisition board and the QUARC environment is excellent, and completely fulfilled our needs. So we were able to gather information quickly, learn what worked and didn't work, then implement the necessary rapid design changes to the controller.”

- Professor Marcia O’Malley, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rice University, USA

Faster development and a clearer control sequence

“Our lab is developing haptic devices and VR systems. Conventionally, we use VC++ and OpenGL to develop the control system and the visual interface. With Q8 and QUARC, I can now do the same thing faster and the control sequence is much clearer than before.”

- Yi Yang, Ph.D Student, Human Machine Interaction & Robotics, Beihang University, China

Students can implement new algorithms quickly

“QUARC interfaces very easily with Simulink. It's excellent in terms of rapid prototyping and it's also very good in terms of research work where you have students working through Simulink. It forces students to be in some ways better programmers than they are. Let's face it, some mechanical engineers don't necessarily like writing code, but now they have this ability to generate real time code by basically developing a Simulink model and then compiling it into real time code. Students can also implement new algorithms fast because they do not need to develop their own haptic system, but only to integrate additional blocks into an existing Simulink model. That certainly makes life much easier.”

- Professor Daniela Constaninescu, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, Canada

If we had been aware of QUARC when we began, we could have saved two years

“QUARC has made our programming faster and more robust. More importantly, it allowed us to move forward quickly by unifying our old and new programming platforms.”

“By understanding two different programming languages, QUARC helped us to prototype the system and produced a working simulation very, very quickly. In one week we installed QUARC, took the interactive tutorial available online from Quanser and used QUARC successfully to do rapid prototyping of the experiment. It just worked as we intended it to. We did high level programming of the robot's vision-based controller very quickly and accurately. If we had been aware of QUARC when we began this assistive robotic project, it would have sped up our work a great deal. We could have saved two years.”

- Professor Aman Behal, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Central Florida, USA

To find out how a wide range of blocksets in QUARC 2.3 are tailored for researchers, click here.

Why Do So Many Professors Consider the Shake Table II Essential To Their Labs?

noreply@blogger.com (MikeG) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:11:00 +0000

In two previous blog posts about Quanser shake tables, we introduced the shake table family and then featured the largest of our offerings in this category, the Shake Table III. In this blog post we cast the spotlight on the Shake Table II.

The most popular of all Quanser shake tables, the Shake Table II is found in university engineering labs all around the world. A heavy load, bench-scale, single-axis shaker, this table features a wide surface that can easily hold a number of structures and accommodate complex as well as simple experiments. These factors, along with its convenient portability, make the Shake Table II particularly useful in teaching and research labs. Read on to see how it is being put to work today.

The most popular member of the Quanser Shake Table family, the bench-scale Shake Table II simulates earthquake movements along a single axis and can move a substantial 7.5 kg load at 2.5 g. It features a wide surface that can accommodate several structures and increase the complexity of your experiments.

University of East London, London, UK:
Easy to use, portable and ideal for teaching

Students from more than 100 countries attend the University of East London, and many of the students who study civil engineering return to countries that are affected by seismic activity. Dr. Mihaela Anca Ciupala, Program Leader at the university’s School of Computing, Information Technology and Engineering (CITE), is very pleased with the learning opportunities made possible with Quanser’s Shake Table II.

The table is used in a number of study areas, including the determination of natural frequencies in multi-DOF structures, and the seismic response of building frames. The Shake Table II provides students with valuable, hands-on experimental experience along with a better understanding of the theoretical concepts presented in CITE’s Civil Engineering courses. It has also enabled research in such areas as seismic response of base-isolated structures and soil-structure interaction.

Dr. Anca Ciupala cites several reasons the Shake Table II was added to their lab. “It’s ideal for teaching purposes because it is easy to use, accessible, portable. And since it has simple software operation, it helps a large number of students to understand and complete projects in a relatively short time.”

University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA:
Provides a real world model that makes abstract seismic concepts easier to understand

Alaska has felt the terrible effects of at least one catastrophic earthquake in the past, and with an eye to preventing serious damage in the future, Professor Zhaohui Yang of the University of Alaska’s Department of Civil Engineering wanted to help the general public experience a vivid demonstration the nature of seismic destruction.

To that end, he and his students created a series of mini-laboratories to showcase structural and geotechnical aspects of earthquake damage, including the effects of a mass damper on a one-story building, as well as the effects of liquefaction on a one-story building. According to Professor Yang, these simulations “provided a real-world model to an otherwise abstract concept, making these concepts easier for the general public to understand.”

The Shake Table II served Professor Yang’s purposes because “it can accurately mimic seismic activity and test building seismic performance”. The Shake Table II’s small scale and portability offered additional advantages, since it is simple to work with in the lab and easy to transport to public demonstration sites.

The Shake Table workstation consists of (from right to left) the blue Shake Table II; on top of it is the one-story Quanser-made model structure, which is connected to the power module in the center of the photo; MATLAB software can be seen on the computer screen. (University of Alaska photos)

Tongji University, Shanghai, China:
Worldwide popularity makes it ideal for collaborative projects

Professor Haibei Xiong, Dean of Tongji University’s College of Civil Engineering, acquired Tongji’s first Shake Table II in 2006 and two more in 2012. The shake tables are used for teaching, conducting structural experiments, and especially for student structural competitions. They use QUARC^® with MATLAB^®/Simulink^® software, and an active mass damper for demo purposes.

Professor Xiong finds the shake tables worthy additions to their lab for several reasons. To begin with, the shake tables’ small scale means students can do experiments easily and safely. There is no additional maintenance cost, so a lab assistant isn’t needed.

She appreciates the fact that QUARC’s open architecture control software, working with MATLAB/Simulink, makes it easy to control several tables at the same time. That capability made the school decide to acquire additional Shake Table II’s. This allows them to conduct multi-point shaking experiments on a bridge structure, and also work on shaking a bigger structure with several small shake tables.

The fact that many civil engineering schools in China are doing collaborative work with universities in North America that use the Shake Table II is another reason for the Quanser Shake Table II’s popularity and presence at Tongji University. The school plans to acquire an additional two Shake Table II’s in the near future.

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA:
Sheer convenience of complete system provides true flexibility

Professor Shirley Dyke is professor of mechanical engineering and civil engineering, at the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University.

She uses the Shake Table II and an Active Mass Damper Controller to teach Structural Dynamics to her first year graduate students. Specifically the Shake Table helps demonstrate the dynamics of building structures. A key reason the Shake Table has a place in her lab is simple convenience. “The system consists not only of a shake table, but includes accelerometers, test structures, data acquisition and a computer to record data and control the shake table itself,” she says. “It gives us desired flexibility in performing experiments.”

In 1999, Professor Dyke was one of the founders of the University Consortium on Instructional Shake Tables (UCIST), a group whose goal was to introduce earthquake simulators into classroom teaching. In fact, the Shake Table II was built in cooperation with UCIST, and UCIST now recommends it as a turnkey solution for teaching structural dynamics to civil engineers.

Cornell University, New York, USA:
Brings earthquake simulations to life in the classroom

Professor Anthony Ingraffea believes that his students grasp structural dynamics concepts better when those concepts are brought to life through real world earthquake simulations in the classroom. Cornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering uses a Quanser Shake Table II for that reason.

Typically Professor Ingraffea organizes students into teams that design and build model structures, then test the structural integrity of their designs in a big “shake-off”. The Shake Table and the simulations effectively mimic the real world and bring theory to life for the students. Professor Ingraffea feels that the Quanser Shake Table II has motivated five generations of Cornell freshmen to better understand the theory of structural dynamics.

University of California, Davis, California, USA:
An essential tool for education, research and outreach

The Shake Table II is a very popular lab tool at University of California, Davis, according to Nima Tafazzoli, postdoctoral researcher in the school’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. It’s used for teaching, research, and outreach.

At the undergraduate level, it helps professors teach classes and seminars in civil and environmental engineering. At the graduate level, it demonstrates the response of single or multiple degrees of freedom structures subjected to earthquakes. As a research tool, the Shake Table II is involved in several projects at Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering when dynamic load is required to be applied to the system. The Shake Table II has also been featured in outreach programs, and is an essential tool in entry in the national seismic design competitions. UC Davis chose the Shake Table II because it is easy to set up, use and transport, without requiring the work of a group of lab assistants. They find it an engaging way to demonstrate the actual behavior of structures and see it as safer to use than most lab equipment, especially with inexperienced students.

Stay tuned to our blog for another post in this Shake Table series. For more information about Quanser Shake Table solutions, click here.

Can Engineering Theory Ever Be Fun?

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:02:00 +0000

This year again Quanser joined Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads for their annual ECEDHA conference, held in Florida. It was the first conference I have attended as a part of Quanser team, so it was a great opportunity for me to meet people who may be using our systems in their labs and talk to them about the best ways to deliver engineering education and make it attractive to young generation.

Can Engineering Theory Ever be Fun? Quanser’s Chief Education Officer, Dr. Tom Lee, raised this question in his ECE Spotlight presentation. The short answer, in my opinion, is yes, it can be - with hands-on labs that offer a more industrially-relevant and motivating experience. A key objective is balancing the motivation and the fun with the rigorous traditions of engineering.

To make things even more fun, Quanser developed a driving simulator, a solution that introduces students to engineering concepts through a highly visual, immersive, video game-like environment while maintaining the conceptual connection to engineering methodology and applications.

ECEDHA delegates not only heard about the driving simulator, but visiting Quanser’s booth they could also experience for themselves this dynamic, real-time, Hardware- in-the-Loop simulation and high fidelity 3D representation of a vehicle driven in a closed racing track environment. Solutions like this help students learn to observe and think critically about the effects of system parameters on not just the discrete plant, but also on the overall system.

Many people who stopped by our booth decided to try their hand at driving our car around the track (which became much more interesting after cocktail hour).

ECEDHA 2013 was my first conference with Quanser (and this is my first blog post). I would like to thank everyone for making it a great experience. Your comments on how to make engineering theory "fun" are welcome and your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Abdullah Dhooma

Product Marketing Engineer, Quanser

The 2013 Waterloo Mechatronics Symposium: A Showcase For Inventive Student Capstone Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:47:00 +0000

Quanser is a provider of educational teaching and research tools for controls, robotic and mechatronics. So when the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Department of the University of Waterloo, considered by many to be Canada’s top engineering school, invited us to be a part of their annual Mechatronics Symposium, we accepted with alacrity.

The Mechatronics Symposium is an end-of-year capstone project showcase for Waterloo’s fourth year engineering students. The challenge for the students is to work in teams to design and build prototypes of commercially viable products that promise to improve the quality of life in big and small ways. Once again Waterloo’s senior engineering students more than met that challenge.

This year, Quanser was represented by Paul Gilbert, Quanser’s CEO and Dr. Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer and a University of Waterloo graduate. Their first duty was to be part of the larger panel of judges of the Symposium, but they also spent a good deal of time mingling and talking to students and faculty alike.

Paul Gilbert, Quanser CEO, and Dr. Tom Lee, Quanser Chief Education Officer, were part of the judging panel that collectively assessed over 150 capstone projects from fourth year engineering students at the University of Waterloo's 2013 Mechatronics Symposium.

Both Paul and Tom found the quality of the presentations first-rate. “I loved talking to the students,” Paul says. “Across the board they’re incredibly bright and completely focused on problem solving, and that’s typical of Waterloo-trained engineers.” Proof that that’s not mere flattery: upwards of 50% of Quanser engineers are Waterloo graduates and half of the company’s management team are Waterloo grads as well.

Over 150 diverse projects were presented over the course of the day. They ranged from a single player air-hockey table and an automated egg washer for small scale farms, to a portable water purification system that can be attached to a bicycle and a search-and-rescue robot that replaces a rescue worker.

Quanser was pleased to sponsor a $500 prize for Best Presentation, which went to the team known as Group 11. Their project was an automated Laparoscopic Suturing Tool that could assist in abdominal surgery. It was designed in collaboration with KidsArm Project researchers at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario.

The award for Best Presentation, sponsored by Quanser, went to Group 11 for their Automated Laparoscopic Suturing Tool. Shown above: Karl Price, Angelica Ruszkowski (Group 11); Professor Jan Huissoon, Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo; Brock Kopp (Group 11); Professor Willaim Melek, Director of Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo.

At the end of the day, Paul Gilbert summed up his experience. “I learned a lot today and was completely energized by the dedication and skills of these fourth year students. In talking to them I saw they found hands-on engineering incredibly motivating, which is one of our core beliefs at Quanser and which guides us as we produce teaching and research tools. This program is representative of the best of today’s engineering schools – the ones that are forging a path to developing a new breed of interdisciplinary-skilled engineers. We’re honored to be so closely associated with them and will continue to support them in the years to come.”

Zen and the art of raising teenagers

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:46:00 +0000

Click here to watch the FIRST GTA West Regionals in full swing

Nothing could be more terrifying to most adults than being surrounded by thousands of sleep-deprived, cola-filled teenagers wielding power tools … unless you're at a FIRST Robotics competition, of course. Quanser, once again, was an active participant in this highly successful annual competition designed to give young nerds, and young nerd wannabes a chance to show off their cerebral mojo. This past week was the Greater Toronto Regional, one of the largest and most prestigious among the many FIRST regional tournaments. I had the pleasure of being Judge Advisor for the event. Joining me as part of the Judge team were Quanser engineers Peter Martin and Abdullah Dhooma. On the field, the newest Quanser engineer, Gilbert Lai was a mentor for Team 771 affectionately known as SWAT. Additionally, Quanser was once again the proud sponsor of Team 4001, the Rams of St. Robert CHS of Thornhill near Toronto. Our team competed in the Toronto East competition and Calgary.

This interaction with a high school competitions has multiple benefits for Quanser. At a pure business level, our future success depends on our ability to offer relevant products and services to a greater range of audiences. The fact that the K12 world has thoroughly embraced robotics and key essential concepts of control means our experiences today can help secure our success tomorrow. But perhaps the more important benefit is almost spiritual in nature. The competition depends largely on volunteers and in many cases, these volunteers are seasoned technical professional who sacrifice their own time to guide the teams through the monumental challenges that are at the heart of FIRST. I and my Quanser colleagues are examples of such people and year after year, we emerge from these sweaty, exhausting weekends with a newly found faith in the future and our youth. Any notion of the emerging generation being somewhat unfocused, or dispirited, or any disenchantments about the increasing volatility and meanness in society magically vanish for an all too brief moment.

I am currently in the latter stages of shepherding two teenagers into adulthood and like most parents in may phase, a large part of our lives is dedicated in worrying about whether we've provided the best guidance and environment for our kids to learn to make the best choices in life. At home, it's all too easy to dwell on the mistakes that we make as parents or our kids make as … well … kids. Or we repeatedly stress over things that didn't quite turn out as you thought they would or should. At a FIRST competition, you only see the good. Although there are countless disappointments — breakdowns, strategy errors, bad timing, and even the theft of an entire trailer full of essential equipment — the teams manage to achieve miracles. For judges like myself, the toughest part is figuring out how best to commend and congratulate students without resorting to clichés and overused platitudes. "Great job!" and "Way to go!" do not come close to capturing all the nuanced dimensions of success that the teams achieve. But in the end, we all get through it and the most precious part of the experience for us volunteers is we learn to become positive again and things make much more sense when we get home. Yes, it is true that a bulldozer could not clear away the clutter in my daughter's room but that is so insignificant when you consider that she pulled herself to an A grade from an earlier state of sheer terror in her AP math course.

I have been involved in one way or another with the FIRST program for almost twenty years but this year was my most active. And every year the importance of this competition becomes ever more clear. I consider myself extremely fortunate that I get to enjoy all of these existential and spiritual benefits but there are also distinct and real benefits to the company. Indeed it was at a FIRST event when Quanser CEO Paul Gilbert and Founder Jacob Apkarian ambushed me and persuaded me to sign on the dotted line. A very prophetic moment indeed.

P.S. Our team 4001 in their second year of competition was awarded the Innovation in Control award — an award typically won by the most seasoned and technically accomplished teams. I guess it's not a bad thing to have a leading mechatronic company as your mentors!

Tom Lee
Chief Education Officer, Quanser

Introducing the QUBE Servo – a Streamlined, Cost-Effective Way to Teach Introductory Controls

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:54:00 +0000

Imagine the well known high quality of a Quanser rotary servo motor experiment that is smaller than our flagship rotary servo base unit. Imagine this new experiment features fully integrated components instead of external, plug-in peripherals. Imagine it is remarkably simple for students to use. Now go further and imagine it comes with proven courseware that helps professors teach some of the same fundamental control principles as the Rotary Servo Base Unit.

Interesting? Engineering educators we’ve spoken with have replied with a resounding “yes”. But here’s the most interesting feature about the compact new rotary servo—its cost, which because of its simplicity and compactness is significantly lower than our traditional Rotary Servo Base Unit, in fact low enough to make Quanser’s hands-on approach to teaching controls an affordable choice for virtually any educational institution in the world, no matter what the local economic pressures are. This new solution is called the QUBE-Servo. It will be available from Quanser later this spring.

The QUBE-Servo is designed for maximum simplicity and ease of use. When released, it will feature two add-on modules, the inertia wheel and the inverted pendulum.

A Budget-Friendly Solution that Upgrades Your Controls Lab

Engineering schools around the world face real funding challenges. As strong as those challenges are for institutions in North America and Europe, they can be daunting for schools in the developing world. Consequently, teaching solutions that are both cost-efficient and effective are needed more than ever.

The low cost QUBE-Servo is Quanser’s new turn-key solution to help engineering institutions and educators meet this need. Budget-challenged professors can now outfit their labs with control technology that’s notable for its high quality, ease of use, small footprint and safety, all in a cost effective way. Students will derive a deep learning experience from the QUBE’s hands-on experiments and courseware that allow them to make the connection between their classroom studies to the real world applications and problems they want to solve.

Teach Fundamental Control Concepts, Lab by Lab

Upon release in the spring, the QUBE-Servo will be available with two add-on control modules—the inertia wheel and the inverted pendulum—plus full courseware for both. For the inertia control wheel experiment, students learn first-principle derivation, experimental derivation, transfer function representation, stability analysis, model validation and PD. For the inverted pendulum experiment, students learn state-space representation, balance control, optimal LQR control design, energy-based swing-up control.

A Brief Technical Tour

The QUBE-Servo is a fully integrated plant, with USB-based data acquisition system and amplifier all in one. It comes with two add-on modules that quick-connect to it magnetically. It features one USB 2.0 port that connects to a PC or laptop. No tools or additional cabling are required. The integrated components are fully supported by our Rapid Control Prototyping Toolkit software add-on for LabVIEW™ and our own QUARC® rapid control prototyping software. The data acquisition card has two encoder inputs for the motor itself and for whichever module you connect to it, as well as an analog output to control the motor itself. The PWM-based amplifier has been designed specifically for the QUBE’s motor. The QUBE can also be ordered with a Direct I/O interface that allows the QUBE to be connected directly to an external DAQ.

Instead of separate, plug-in peripherals, the QUBE Rotary Servo contains a fully-integrated plant, USB-based data acquisition system and amplifier, all-in-one. Its dimensions (L x W x H) are 102 mm x 102 mm x 118 mm.

Differences between the QUBE-Servo and the Rotary Servo

The flagship Rotary Servo Base Unit is designed to be extremely versatile and reconfigurable. It accommodates an extensive system of add-on experiment modules, amplifiers and data acquisition boards. To run an experiment you first select and externally connect the data acquisition board and amplifier you need, along with the rotary plant that you’re actually going to use. Such reconfigurability is particularly useful if you need a flexible lab, or if you are sharing lab equipment across departments with different needs. The Rotary Servo Base Unit currently accepts ten add-on experiment modules and has the bandwidth and robustness needed to validate simple to advanced control algorithms developed by researchers in a variety of application fields and scenarios.

The QUBE-Servo provides maximum simplicity and ease of use. Its major components are already integrated into one unit and are not designed to be reconfigured or “swapped out”. Two add-on modules will be immediately available for the QUBE: the inertia wheel and the inverted pendulum. Both allow professors to teach some of the same fundamental control concepts as the equivalent modules on the Rotary Servo Base Unit.

The QUBE-Servo will be available this spring. To find out the release date, please contact Abdullah Dhooma, Product Marketing Engineer at Quanser.

Listen, Learn, Understand – My Passage Through India

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:48:00 +0000

I recently returned from an eight day trip to India that was unlike any other business trip I’ve ever taken. That’s quite a statement since in the past 25 years, I’ve taken quite a few and to all parts of the world. This trip was intriguing for two reasons. First, I have a personal connection to India. My father was raised there. As a result, I felt quite at home in a country that most Westerners find overwhelming or exotic. In fact, many of the people I met on this trip reminded me of my family members.

Second, this is a unique and pivotal moment for India. Home to 1.1 billion people, this diverse and huge nation is on the verge of taking a front row position on the world stage. Virtually every area of this complex society is modernizing at a rapid pace, and no part so rapidly or comprehensively as its educational system.

For the past decade at least, India has been investing heavily in education. It is building schools, investing in equipment, expanding and developing faculty. This investment is being spearheaded not only at the government level, but by expatriate Indians who are returning to India to invest and modernize.

This intense focus on education seems to be reaching a tipping point, as two of the country’s biggest goals are to provide education for everyone at a young age, and to vastly improve the availability of a quality, high level technical education. We believe Quanser can play an important role in achieving the latter goal.

Paul Gilbert of Quanser (right) and members of the City of Markham, Ontario, Trade Mission meet with IIT-Madras faculty members to develop a better understanding of the challenges facing engineering educators in India.

An Immense Need for Quality Engineering Graduates

As in other countries, India’s engineering education occurs on many levels. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) specialize in high level engineering education, much like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) does in the United States. Eight IITs exist at the moment, with another eight scheduled to come on stream by 2015. Over 100 Tier 1 universities have engineering departments, while approximately another 3,500 Tier 2 schools (public and private) also teach engineering or engineering technology. Ten years ago this system was graduating well under 100,000 engineers annually; today, they are graduating 700,000 engineers a year. (This compares to 7,000 annually in Canada and 65,000 in the United States.) Anecdotally, only 25 per cent of that number is immediately employable, while the remaining graduates need some degree of retraining after they get jobs in industry.

Clearly it’s not hard to identify India’s major technical educational issue – Quality; in that I include quality teaching and research materials, courseware, faculty development and overall best practices for motivating the new generation of engineering students.

The need to enhance Quality in engineering education is why Quanser is paying such attention to India. We’re recognized around the world as a provider of high quality engineering educational materials for teaching and research in controls and robotics.

Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities

My role on this trip was to gain a deeper, detailed understanding of the challenges faced by India’s different engineering institutions. To that end, I met with senior level educators and government officials in seven cities: Gandhinagar, Chennai, Mumbai, Madras, Delhi, Jodhpur, and Coimbatore.

During that process, we started identifying ways Quanser solutions and services could help meet the diverse schools’ needs. I also took part in conversations with key educational, government and industry decision makers, to learn how they saw their institutions growing in the coming years, and how they could efficiently and effectively make their schools into models of 21^st century engineering education.

Certainly such a conversation extends far beyond selling equipment. It involves a strategic discussion of so many things, including ways to raise the level of teaching, how to set up a modern controls and robotics labs, ways to encourage collaborative projects between Canadian and Indian universities, the potential of various virtual lab programs, how and when to conduct training, workshops and much more.

These conversations often centered on ways to excite and motivate the new generation of engineering students. Like their North American counterparts, these young Indian women and men respond to new methods, materials and learning environments. Theirs is the first generation of engineering students entering university familiar with cell phones, video games and tablets; a generation that is characterized by short attention spans, a remarkable ability to multi-task, and a strong interest in hands-on, practical learning. Understanding them is the key to our helping Indian educational institutions achieve success.

Sunny Ray (left), Quanser's Channel Manager for South Asia and India, is working closely with Quanser CEO Paul Gilbert (right) to inform Indian engineering professors and deans of the ways engineering education can be enhanced through a strategic relationship with Quanser.

This trip was not a one-man enterprise – far from it. Working closely with me was Sunny Ray, Quanser’s Channel Manager for South Asia and India. Sunny was tireless, meeting with engineering professors and deans to discuss the state of their curriculum, and joining the City of Markham, Ontario, Canada’s Trade Mission, which was meeting with Indian business and government officials. He gave numerous presentations about Quanser, which is itself based in Markham. Thank you, Sunny, for your stalwart efforts.

Modernizing a Nation Through Education

To sum up, this trip represents to me a significant milestone in our efforts to understand the diverse, worldwide marketplace, as we strive to provide the cost effective and pedagogical effectively solutions our clients require. For our colleagues and clients in India, we’re attempting nothing less than helping them build their nation through education. That’s a source of immense satisfaction for us.

This trip was a milestone on a very personal level as well. Given my family’s connection to India, I take great pride in the fact that Quanser is committed to helping one of the oldest cultures in the world transform itself into one of the most vibrant modern communities in the future.

- - Paul Gilbert

Paul Gilbert is Chief Executive Officer of Quanser, Inc.

NI LabVIEW™ Users: Choose From 18 Rotary and Linear Motion Workstations to Improve Your Teaching Effectiveness

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:40:00 +0000

Teaching professors who use NI LabVIEW™ graphical programming platform have a great opportunity to build their control labs. The reason: a total of 18 hands-on Quanser rotary and linear motion workstations are now integrated with LabVIEW and related NI peripheral devices. This makes it easier to cover a wider range of control topics, expose students to engaging, hands-on experiments, and bring control theory to life.

The Rotary Servo Control Lab for NI LabVIEW includes nine experiment modules and 10 workstations, while the Linear Motion Control Lab for NI LabVIEW is made up of seven experiment modules and eight workstations. The courseware provided with the additional modules builds upon the fundamentals and allows professors to teach advanced control topics, including pole placement and LQR optimization, and advanced linear motion topics, including state-feedback and LQR optimization.

Watch this video to see how we help teach LQR optimization.

By choosing from this array of integrated workstations, you can incrementally build your own high-functioning lab—one that helps your students learn introductory, intermediate and advanced control concepts, and allows you to reach a new level of efficiency and effectiveness in teaching controls, robotics and mechatronics.

Choosing from the 18 available Rotary and Linear Motion workstations allows you to incrementally build your own high-functioning lab. This lab can help you reach a new level of efficiency and effectiveness in teaching controls, robotics and mechatronics.

However you choose to shape your Quanser/NI LabVIEW-based controls lab, you’ll be exposing your students to hands-on learning that connects theory to real world applications, and you'll be helping them learn more deeply and effectively.

How QUARC Helps Students Understand Controls Better

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:29:00 +0000

Ask professors why QUARC^® rapid control prototyping software is so effective in helping students understand control design and their answers highlight all the major benefits it brings to the learning process.

QUARC is easy for students to use and designed to save them great amounts of development time. Working in conjunction with Simulink^®, it allows students to draw a controller, generate code, and run it in real time, all without digital signal processing, or without writing a single line of code. As Professor YangQuan Chen of Utah State University has observed, “Using QUARC, students can control physical systems in no time.”

By using QUARC, students will spend less time coding, achieve quicker and better results and experience a deeper learning experience.

Because QUARC integrates seamlessly with the Simulink software that most students are already using, it allows them to test their existing Simulink models in real time on their PC or external hardware, or easily integrate hardware-in-the-loop experiments as well, resulting a deeper learning experience. In the end, QUARC means students can spend less time coding, achieve quicker and better results, and concentrate on gaining a better grasp of control concepts.

Engineering professors around the world are using QUARC to help their students understand controls. Here’s what some of them have told us about their experiences:

"Think through problems, skip the tedium"

Because of the time my students can save using QUARC^®, they can actually design something that will work within the time frame of an undergraduate degree. They can really focus on the important control aspects. They are learning by thinking through problems, doing the exploratory work, practising the theory while skipping the tedium - like hand-coding. Without QUARC, they wouldn't have a hope of completing a project, in my opinion.

- Professor David Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering,

University of Waterloo, Canada

"Real-time control becomes extremely easy"

"As an instructor, I always use MATLAB^® and Simulink^® in my teaching, and then students can use their Simulink knowledge to easily interface with Quanser's QUARC^® software with which real-time control becomes extremely easy. In less than a one hour session, all undergraduate students (who have no prior experience in real-time control) could learn how to build a simple control loop, and obtain successful experimental results.

- Professor Rifat Sipahi, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,

Northeastern University, USA

"Improves the learning experience"

QUARC^® software is designed so that most fundamental work is done, allowing the students to focus more on the control design theory and less on the workings of MATLAB^® /Simulink^® thus improving the learning experience.

- Professor Wen-Hua Chen, Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering,

Loughborough University, UK

"QUARC^® offers numerous functional and user-friendly features"

We have been quite pleased with using Quanser real-time control systems for both teaching and research within the past 8 years. QUARC^®offers numerous functional and user-friendly features. QUARC is seamlessly integrated with MATLAB^® and Simulink^®, provides the means for rapid model compilation and evaluation, and allows for multi-rate simulation, to name a few. In a nutshell, QUARC is a low-cost yet reliable and powerful real-time control system solution, suitable for our everyday needs in controls and robotics.

-Professor Keyvan Hashtrudi-Zaad, Electrical and Computer Engineering,

Queen’s University, Canada

"Students control physical systems in no time"

Students like to work with Quanser equipment. It is easy for them to get started. They just follow the wiring procedure and everything else is just mouse-clicking. Using Quanser’s rapid control prototyping and real-time software, QUARC^®, they can control physical systems in no time.

- Professor YangQuan Chen, Electrical and Compute Engineering,

Utah State University, USA

How QNET Trainers Help You Prepare Students for the Working World

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:47:00 +0000

Last month I told you about how we have improved the QNET Resources that are available with each of the six QNET trainers. I also briefly highlighted the QNET trainers themselves and their ability to help you teach the basics of servo, process, and task-based control, plus introductory flight control, bio-instrumentation and mechatronic sensing.

In this post, I want to continue the QNET trainers story along two lines: the key control topics they help you teach, and the value of exposing your students to fundamental control principles using industry-relevant LabVIEW^™ graphical programming software.

Teach a Wide Range of Controls Topics

The following chart gives a concise mapping between the QNET boards and several controls topics that are common to the study of control in not only mechanical, electrical, and aerospace engineering, but also computer science, applied physics and bio-engineering.

The NI ELVIS II platform and LabVIEW controllers seamlessly complement the QNET line by directly mapping theory to practice, and offering students the hands-on, practical experience they need to compete and perform in industry today.

QNETs and LabVIEW^™: A Logical Combination That Prepares Undergraduate Controls Students for Industry

At Quanser, a concept we strongly believe in is the “controls education continuum”. Essentially this continuum encompasses your students’ progress from the lower to upper undergraduate years, through to graduate studies or working in industry.

QNET trainers, in conjunction with the LabVIEW graphical programming environment, occupy a key place in that continuum by offering a modular platform to span a student’s complete academic career.

QNETs cover a wide range of controls topics, while the LabVIEW environment helps students to intuitively bridge the gap between theory and application by intuitively highlighting the direct correlations between the whiteboard and block diagram.

Using LabVIEW, students can learn the essential skills of controls engineering including modeling, control design, simulation, implementation, and operation of a control system from a single environment. The LabVIEW skills they develop by using QNET trainers will be of great benefit when the time comes for the studensty to design controls for more complex plants.

QNET trainers are a highly effective tool for teaching common control concepts to novice, intermediate and advanced engineering and applied science students. They are designed to fit on the National Instruments (NI) ELVIS II platform.

Using the Quanser Rapid Control Prototyping Toolkit, a wide range of advanced Quanser plants from helicopters to shake tables can be integrated quickly and easily into the LabVIEW environment. This enables students to complete a hardware continuum that compliments their progression in controls skills development from the QNET VTOL trainer all the way up to a 2 or 3 DOF helicopter, or from a QNET Rotary Pendulum to a Rotary Servo 2 DOF Inverted Pendulum.

The fact that LabVIEW is widely used all across industry means students can immediately take their practiced programming skills from the academic realm directly to the factory floor. The combination of these two great tools – QNET trainers and the LabVIEW graphical programming environment – thus helps you provide your students with a clear and consistent learning progression, one that effectively prepares them to make an immediate contribution when they enter the challenging world of control systems engineering.

- Peter Martin

Peter Martin is a Curriculum Developer at Quanser

What Makes the xy Shake Table III Attractive To Professors?

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:45:00 +0000

In a recent blog post we talked about our Shake Tables and how they help undergrad students grasp complex concepts of structural engineering more quickly and thoroughly. Today, let’s focus on the largest member of the Quanser Shake Table family.

One reason professors choose the xy Shake Table III is its usefulness in demonstrating the principles of structural dynamics to their students through hands-on experiments that bring theory to life. When you consider its ability to accommodate large model structures and big loads, and its flexibility in the research lab, it’s easy to understand why many professors find it such a perfect match for their lab.

As the largest member of the Quanser Shake Table family, the xy Shake Table III moves along two axes and can handle heavier loads. It is designed to accelerate loads of up to 100 kg at 1 g while providing high acceleration and velocity for a lab’s customized structures.

Dalian University of Technology, China: a dedicated xy table with high performance

As a member of Dalian University of Technology’s Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering in China, Professor Luyu Li uses the xy Shake Table III to conduct earthquake engineering research. One of his areas of interest involves conducting nonlinear vibration seismic performance tests on steel structures.

He became interested in xy table motion when he was working on his PhD, when he began using a Quanser Shake Table II. At one time, he stacked two Shake Table II’s together to achieve the desired xy motion. At Dalian University, he was looking for a dedicated xy table with higher performance (heavier loads, weight bearing, higher acceleration, and greater stroke) compared to the stacked ST II arrangement and decided on the xy Shake Table III.

Key factors that led to his choosing the xy Shake Table III were its easy-connect capability, its compatibility with the Simulink environment, which he finds very suitable for control applications, and its high bandwidth using linear motor actuators. In addition, the xy Shake Table III came as a complete workstation, with Quanser data acquisition devices, accelerometers and QUARC^®control design software for MATLAB^®/Simulink^®.

Cal Poly Pomona, USA: a dynamic addition to its structures laboratory

Professor Felipe J. Perez is an assistant professor in CSU Pomona’s Civil Engineering department. He is currently using the xy Shake Table III to assist with undergraduate student projects and competitions, such as the Seismic Design Competition. There are plans to use the Shake Table as part of an existing structures laboratory to demonstrate dynamic characteristics of different structures.

Professor Perez finds Quanser’s strong commitment to supporting his needs more than exceeded his expectations.

A university-built customized structure is about to be tested on the Quanser xy Shake Table III by Professor Felipe J. Perez in his Civil Engineering lab at CalPoly Pomona.

Universidad Mariano Galvez de Guatemala, Guatemala: a shake table that meets their teaching and research needs

Professor José Carlos Gil of the Universidad Mariano Galvez de Guatemala tells us that their xy Shake Table III is used mainly to teach structural dynamics in structural engineering courses. Guatemala lies on a major fault zone and earthquakes are relatively common events. Fittingly, the university’s design course places special emphasis on building seismic-resistant structures.

The xy Shake Table III has been used to demonstrate topics such as dynamic amplification, vibration modes, and the influence of such aspects in the structure dynamic response. Its size and capabilities also allows the school to conduct structural research using scale models. The university acquired the xy Shake Table III after reading about it in an engineering publication. They realized it would help them reach their teaching objectives in structural engineering.

Stay tuned for more posts in this Shake Table series. For more information on Quanser Shake Table solutions, click here.

Quanser Salutes “Overall Best Industry-Linked Engineering Institutes” in India

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:45:00 +0000

PSG College of Technology (PSG), Coimbatore, and the College of Engineering, Pune, (CoEP) were recently ranked first and second in a joint survey of “best overall industry-linked engineering institutes” in India.

The survey was conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Its goal was to highlight the best practices of industry and engineering university partnerships engaged in by AICTE-approved engineering institutes. A total of 156 engineering institutes took part in this voluntary survey.

Linking engineering schools with industry partners is widely seen as an effective strategy for bridging the gap between academia and industry and ensuring that newly-graduated engineers are well-trained and ready to enter the industry seamlessly.

Quanser supports this strategy in India and around the world. Our role is to develop hands-on experiments for engineering students that engage and motivate them. We offer additional support by providing ABET-aligned courseware professors can use to complement their teaching if they so choose.

Sunny Ray, Quanser Channel Manager for South Asia, speaks with guests at the 2011 opening of a Quanser Center of Excellence at the College of Engineering, Pune, India.

For some time now, Quanser has had a presence at these high-ranking schools and Quanser workstations and courseware are part of their control labs. In 2011 CoEP opened a Quanser Center of Excellence, and PSG is qualified as a Quanser Center of Core Competence. Furthermore, professors at both schools are currently writing papers and preparing to publish books based on teaching and research using Quanser solutions. Clearly their commitment to bridging the gap between theory and practice in engineering education is reflected in the way they are partnering with us. I am not at all surprised they were the recipients of this prestigious award, and on behalf of Quanser, I congratulate them.

To sum up, companies in India are seriously challenged when it comes to finding enough industry-ready engineers directly out of university. Indeed, according to a study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute on the emerging global labour market, only 25 percent of the engineers coming out of institutions in this country are immediately employable. The AICTE survey helps to highlight which schools are doing the best job in bridging the gap between academia and industry. I feel that the joint survey is very important and I look forward to working more closely with PSG, CoEP and other engineering institutes to meet this challenge.

- Sunny Ray

Quanser Channel Manager, South Asia

Is Engineering Education Moving In The Right Direction?

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:21:00 +0000

Does engineering education need an overhaul? How do educators ensure the next generation of engineers is ready to meet the complex challenges of the 21^st century? Dr. Tom Lee, Chief Education Officer at Quanser, Inc, offers insights into these all-important questions in “Why Can't Johnny Design?”, a four-part series of articles in EEWeb-Pulse magazine.

Engineering students' "fear of math" is one of several issues impacting modern engineering education, according to Dr. Tom Lee, Chief Education Officer of Quanser. Read the article to learn ways this problem is being addressed.

In “Part 1: The Challenges in Modern Engineering Education”, Tom looks at the modern engineering curriculum and how it prepares – or doesn’t prepare – students about to enter the industry.

In Part 2, “Re-Inventing the Engineering Lab”, Tom examines the undergraduate lab and outlines how it’s changing to provide more effective learning.

In Part 3, “Doing the Math”, Tom looks at the challenge mathematics still presents to many students and suggest ways this problem can being addressed.

Part 4, “Motivating Younger Students”, will round out the series in a future issue.

We encourage you to read these articles and give us your feedback. Happy reading!

From WinCon to QUARC 2.3: the Evolution of Real-Time Control

noreply@blogger.com (Quanser) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:21:00 +0000

Quanser’s QUARC® rapid control prototyping software was specifically designed to extend Simulink’s capabilities. It does so by allowing engineers to run Simulink models seamlessly in real-time on real hardware. Naturally QUARC 2.3, the new version of QUARC that will be released shortly, will feature full compatibility with the new MATLAB^®/Simulink^®R2012a and R2012b.

Quanser will soon release QUARC 2.3 control software, which will offer
full compatibility with the new MATLAB^®/Simulink^® R2012a and R2012b.

Researchers and teaching professors in a variety of disciplines can implement virtually any control algorithm using QUARC. They can teach control concepts using Quanser equipment; conduct research with it on Quanser equipment; even do research with customized or third party equipment thanks to the advanced functionality and customized blocksets.

Professors and students alike can work with tremendous ease and efficiency, since they will spend less time coding and more time on high-level designing and testing.

Faster Design and Prototyping

An excellent example of this ease and efficiency comes from Professor Daniela Constaninescu, of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Victoria in Canada.

For her work developing a cooperative haptic rehabilitation exercise, Professor Constantinescu chose to use QUARC and Simulink with Quanser’s Haptic Wand device. QUARC software allowed her research team to design a real-time controller quickly and made the communication with her C++ - based simulation engine easy.

A researcher at the University of Victoria performs a haptic cooperation experiment using Quanser’s Haptic Wand device and QUARC® control software. Both the hardware and software were reliable, time-saving tools that helped Professor Constantinescu advance her haptic research.

“QUARC interfaces very easily with Simulink”, says Professor Constantinescu. “It's excellent in terms of rapid control prototyping and it's also very good in terms of research work where you have students working through Simulink. It forces students to be in some ways better programmers than they are.” As she pointed out, not all mechanical engineers like writing code. “But now they have this ability to generate real-time code by basically developing a Simulink model and then compiling it into real-time code. Students can also implement new algorithms fast because they do not need to develop their own haptic system, but only to integrate additional blocks into an existing Simulink model. That certainly makes life much easier.”

From WinCon 1.0 to QUARC 2.3: a History of Accelerating Design

QUARC’s history began over twenty years ago when Dr. Jacob Apkarian, Quanser’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, wanted to develop a graphical way of implementing feedback control design in Windows® through pre-drawn block diagrams. He assigned that task to his Chief Scientist, Dr. Dan Madill and WinCon 1.0 was born. “This was in the days before the existence of MATLAB’s Simulink simulation program, recalls Dr. Madill. “When MATLAB did release Simulink, there was still no way to do real-time coding. So we then created WinCon 2.0, which when integrated with Simulink, automatically generated control code and ran it in real-time.”

“WinCon worked well with successive versions of Windows but as time went on and technical possibilities expanded, we were running into a variety of limitations. In addition, the WinCon code building on top of earlier Windows code was getting complicated.” The Quanser software development team took the opportunity to completely redesign WinCon, expand its scope, and integrate it more closely with Simulink. They also gave it a new name: QUARC.

A Real-Time Revolution In Controls

Among the goals developed for QUARC software was a high degree of compatibility with current and future versions of MATLAB/Simulink. QUARC works with virtually any operating system/platform (Windows^®, QNX^®, Linux^™) and uses a “wrapper layer” that abstracts the OS so that, in terms of coding, every OS looks the same. “That leads to a consistent user experience,” says Dr. Madill.

All this makes QUARC a real-time control revolution: extremely versatile, portable, flexible and verifiable. It is a seamless way of running simulations and achieving real-time control. As a result, students can learn control concepts faster and better; researchers can test their theories in real-time, drastically reducing development time and cost; and real-world devices are perfected sooner and fast-tracked to market.

There’s Even More To The QUARC^® Story

Watch for more upcoming QUARC blog posts. We will give you some examples of how QUARC has helped professors teach controls to students and take you on an around-the-world tour to see how QUARC has helped professors and engineers in industry conduct research.

You can learn more about QUARC using an online Interactive Tutorial. Or request a free 30 day trial version of QUARC 2.3.

See you next time!