Manual Control Laboratory

The manual control laboratory is a collection of human performance tasks chosen to illustrate principles of control theory. These tasks include a dynamics demo that illustrates the open loop response characteristics of different dynamic systems. This demo allows the user to simultaneously view the output for three systems. The dynamics for each system can be specified independently. Thus, the response characteristics can be directly observed and compared. A target acquisition task is used to illustrate modeling in the time domain. Feedback is provided in terms of time histories and state space trajectories. Modeling in the frequency domain is illustrated using a continuous, sum-of-sines tracking task. Performance assessment is provided in terms of power spectra and bode plots. The critical tracking (or Jex task) is used to illustrate the logic of root locus analysis. Across the tasks, variables that can be adjusted include gain, time delay, order of control, and the type of display logic (quickened or unquickened).