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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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