Development of a web-based control experiment for a coupled tank apparatus

Abstract

This paper presents the implementation of a web-based laboratory experiment on a 'coupled tank apparatus', a MIMO system using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for communication. The web-based laboratory has been developed to serve undergraduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering at The National University of Singapore. The control strategies adopted include: manual control, the use of PID controllers, a general state-space controller, as well as fuzzy controllers. The implementation uses video conferencing to provide fast and point-to-point visual feedback to the client, on the events in the laboratory and also allows users to control the zoom and viewing angle of the video. This web-based remote labs can be accessed at vlab.ee.nus.edu.sg/vlab/control/.