Role of Automated Symbolic Generation of Plant Models in Control Education

A critical precursor to deployment of model-based controllers for articulated-mechanical-systems is availability of a systematic means for generating plant-model-equations. However, the complexity and tractability of generating and analyzing models serves to limit the size of the chosen examples. Hence, we examine the use of contemporary symbolic-computation tools to assist with the automated symbolic equation generation and subsequent analysis to support control systems course work. In particular, we seek to establish linkage between traditional-approach and block-diagram-based symbolic-modeling and controller-development. The Furuta Pendulum example allows us to showcase the emergence of model-complexity, even in relatively-simple two-jointed mechanical system, while studying various aspects of model-creation, model-linearization and model-based controller development in a timely manner.