2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Development of Control Engineering Curriculum for Advanced Research and Undergraduate Education: A Practical Approach to Bring Theory Closer to Practice Using Quanser® Products

Undergraduate control engineering courses are considered full of theory with complex mathematical procedures, which turns into a difficult task for students. Herein, the real-time implementation of control strategies is crucial to bring theory closer to practice, and to enhance the engagement of the students. However, it is necessary to analyze the curricula holistically to balance the control engineering concepts with the soft and technical competencies required to allow the experiential learning (learning-by-doing). Therefore, an advanced control engineering level course is developed. Here, the course and lab sessions are carefully designed to promote different and complex competencies required by ABET Criterion, such as: i) critical analysis/thinking, ii) metacognition, iii) syn thesis of complex problems, iv) experimental and analytical skills, v) data collection and processing.
The overall course consists of 400 hours, in which 132 hours are related to theory while 268 hours are designed to attend a real industry problem; this, to prepare the students for the real-world engineering context. The lab sessions are carried out using products of the Quanser® company, which is a world leader in the design and development of an interdisciplinary ecosystem for engineering education and research. Moreover, the Matlab and Simulink® computing software with QUARC™ are used to validate real-time applications on hardware.
Roughly speaking, the course is taught by a group of Professor experts in vision systems, machine learning, project management and advanced control strategies such as: modern control, model predictive control, nonlinear control, and robust control. To design the lab sessions, 20 Professors received 120 hours of training sessions from the R&D Manager in charge of Academic Applications of Quanser® company. After that, the leaders of the academic minor designed their own lab practices and solutions. Hence, the lab practices are aligned to the actual curricula from mechatronics, robotics and mechanics careers; this, to guarantee the versatility of the teaching material.
During the first year of implementation, to test their own control strategies through the lab practices, more than 200 students used the products: DC Motor (under both configurations: inertial disk and inverted pendulum), Aero 2 (using the three systems: 1 DOF, Half quadrotor and helicopter).
On the other hand, considering that engineering education emphasizes technical skills to prepare graduates for the real-world engineering context, during the third period of the academic minor, learners must work into a challenge entitled: ¨Advanced control strategies in UAV’s for fuel theft detection in Mexico¨, which is an actual problem in this country. Here, based on the designed advanced control strategies, the drone can be flight in automatic mode to detect illegal taps and reject external disturbances. Professors provided tutoring on: vehicle dynamics, main concepts of Drone Studio, and path/waypoints programming control. The first advanced control strategy to implement is a Cascaded Model Predictive Control Architecture developed and published in an indexed journal Q1 by the leaders of the academic minor, as an outcome of a research collaboration between Universities from Mexico and United States.

Authors

Dr. David Sotelo http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-3060-7033 Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

David Sotelo is a Research Assistant Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey. He received his B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering and his M.S. degree in Automation and Control Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, México in 2010 and 2015 respectively. Moreover, in 2014 he has received his M.S. degree in Systems, Control and I&T from the Université Joseph Fourier of Grenoble, France. In 2019, he received his PhD degree with several publications. Nowadays, he is ascribed in the Mobility research group at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey City, member of the Mexican National Research System SNI-I. His main research interests are optimal and robust control, process identification and design of control structures in crude oil distillation columns.
Dr. Carlos Sotelo http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-9146-5820 Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

Carlos Sotelo is a Research Assistant Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey. He received his B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering and his M.S. degree in Automation and Control Engineering, the two degrees from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, México in 2010 and 2015 respectively. Furthermore, he has received his M.S. degree in Systems, Control and I&T from the Université Joseph Fourier of Grenoble, France in 2014. Finally, in 2019, he received his PhD degree after several publications, he is currently ascribed in the Mobility research group at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey City, member of the Mexican National Research System SNI-I. His main research interests are nonlinear control, mechatronics, parametric identification and predictive control of refinery processes.
Dr. Michael Frye University of the Incarnate Word [biography]

Michael Frye, Ph.D. is a Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of the Incarnate Word, in San Antonio, TX. He is the PI and Director of the Autonomous Vehicle Systems Lab.
Ing. Félix Martínez-Jiménez Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

Félix Martínez-Jiménez is a Master of Science in Engineering student at Tecnológico de Monterrey. He holds a B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey. He works as a teacher assistant in the mechatronics department and forms part of the electromobility research group at Tecnológico de Monterrey. His main research interests are predictive control, autonomous vehicles, and embedded systems.
Carlos Vazquez-Hurtado Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

Carlos Vázquez is the Associate Director of the Mechatronics Department at Tec de Monterrey. He earned his PhD in Advanced Automation and Robotics from Barcelona Tech (UPC, 2012), a MSc in Electronic Systems from ITESM (2002), and a BSc in Electronics from ITC (2000).

His research interests include robotics, automation, and machine vision.
Dr. Ricardo Swain Oropeza Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

Ricardo Swain Oropeza is the Dean of the School of Engineering and Sciences in the Monterrey Region at Tecnológico de Monterrey. With over 24 years of experience at the institution, he has served in key roles as a professor, researcher, curriculum designer, and co-creator of the Tec21 educational model. He is a distinguished member of the National Association of Faculties and Schools of Engineering (ANFEI), where he served as President from 2010 to 2012, and a full academic member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering. He holds a BS in Electronic Systems Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey, an MSc and a PhD in Industrial Computing with a specialization in Mobile Robotics from the Institut Polytechnique de Toulouse in France, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the United States, participating in a research project sponsored by the U.S. Army.
Dr. José Isabel Gómez Quiñones Tecnologico de Monterrey, School of Engineering and Sciences [biography]

José I. Gómez Quiñones is the director of the Mechatronics Department at Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Monterrey. He holds a double degree in Micro and Nano Electronics from the Université de Grenoble and Information Technology and Communications from Tecnológico de Monterrey, a MSc. in Electronic Systems and a BSc. in Electronics and Communications. His research interests include Bioinstrumentation, Microelectronics and Design of Medical Devices.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025