A Laboratory Scale Plant with Hybrid Dynamics and Remote Access via Internet for Control Engineering Education

The major challenge in modern control engineering education is to bring the increasingly sophisticated theory closer to those students who will follow industrial careers. Hybrid system theory addresses practical needs, but its potential is usually not understood by people from industry. Presented laboratory scale plant designed for original educational experiments with hybrid systems is a contribution to introducing this theory at a practical level. The paper includes a description of the plant structure, an outline of the mathematical model and suggested control experiments. The proposed internet access solves the lack of such laboratory set-ups. Web services architecture provides a standards-based access to all who want to learn about the principles of hybrid systems through re-mote experiments.