The electrical engineering curriculum at UMR is experiencing a major restructuring that requires additional control system laboratory experiments. For undergraduate EE students specializing in control, we need to provide a well-rounded education in the theory and practice of control system design in the areas of: 1. Workstation-based integrated control system design 2. Manufacturing automation 3. Process control In addition, we need to provide manufacturing automation courses for non-EE students and for EE students not specializing in control. The current laboratory equipment is woefully inadequate to meet these goals. The equipment requested in this proposal represents the first step toward meeting these goals. The equipment laboratory experiments supported by this equipment are scaled- down versions of the types of problems our graduates encounter in industry. The innovative features of this proposal are: 1. Introduction of Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) concepts to undergraduate control student. 2. Introduction of manufacturing automation in the undergraduate curriculum. 3. Use of commercial process control equipment and a scale process plant teach control.
