Teaching Fuzzy Logic Control Design Through Laboratory Experiments and Student Projects

This article reports on laboratory experirnents that were developed to complement students' theoret ical basis on Fuzzy LOGIC techniques acquired in a course on linear and nonlinear controller design. A first application exanlple is concerned with an “advanced cruise control system” for automobiles. Described in the second example is a laboratory experirnent “magnetically levitated mass” during which various types of FUZZY controllers are developed and tested. Both experiments let students gain a deeper understanding of procedures, expenditures and performance linked to fundamentally different controller design techniques. For convenient experimentation FUZZY–software tools were developed which are also briefly described in this paper.