This is an interactive course about the basic concepts of Systems, Control and their impact in all the human activities.
This interactive course delves into the basic concepts of systems and control, underscoring their significance across various human endeavors. Initially, it introduces foundational ideas of system dynamics, structures, and control. Through numerous examples from nature and engineered devices, the course illustrates how dynamic behaviors of systems can be modified with control systems. It covers methods to assess system performance and design new systems that meet specific requirements. By exploring the benefits and future challenges of control systems, the course aims to inspire innovative applications and development across different scales—from microsystems to universal interactions.
While a basic knowledge of physics is advantageous, it is not mandatory. The course minimizes mathematical complexity and instead focuses on conceptual understanding, making use of general operator concepts and variable relationships.
This course is tailored for beginners and those interested in gaining a foundational understanding of control systems. It is suitable for students from various disciplines, including engineering, social sciences, and anyone curious about the dynamic behavior of systems and their control.
Knowledge from this course can be applied across multiple real-world scenarios:
Participants in this course will learn how to build, program, and control haptic devices, which are mechatronic devices that allow users to feel virtual or remote environments.
At this time, the Hapkit is not available for purchase as a complete kit. Instead, you will need to purchase and make the components as described on the Hapkit website at https://hapkit.stanford.edu/build.html. (If you are an enterprising person, we welcome you to take the open-source design and make into a product!)
In the process, participants will gain an appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of human touch, develop an intuitive connection between equations that describe physical interactions and how they feel, and gain practical interdisciplinary engineering skills related to robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, and computer science.
