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

Abstract

The Internet has evolved into an environment for developing almost all kinds of applications. This paper presents the implementation of a web-based laboratory experiment on a 'Coupled Tank Apparatus', a MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) system, using TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) for communication. The web-based laboratory has been developed to serve undergraduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering at NUS (The National University of Singapore). The control strategies adopted include manual control, the use of a PID (Proportional Integral Differential) controller, a general state-space controller as well as a fuzzy controller. The implementation uses video conferencing to provide fast and point-to-point visual feedback to the client, on the happenings 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/.