OE-5.1 Industrial Control & Sensors
You can explain the purpose of automatic control and how an industrial control system is implemented, and select among motion, position, force, level and temperature sensors.
This unit is the instrumentation counterpart to a control theory course - same loop, but the emphasis is on the physical devices that close it. Thermocouples earn their own place because the Seebeck effect gives a small voltage that needs cold-junction compensation, a detail that trips up real designs. Learn each sensor by what it outputs and what it costs in accuracy, not by its internal physics alone.
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Purpose of automatic control
Why anything is controlled automatically at all, before any hardware. Stating the purpose keeps the rest of the subject from becoming a catalogue of devices.
How an industrial control system is implemented
How a real plant is put together, from sensor to actuator. It is the map the remaining topics fill in one block at a time.
Introduction to automatic control theory
The theory in outline, which other subjects cover in full. Enough here to read a block diagram and know what feedback is doing.
Sensor definition and classification
What counts as a sensor, and the families they fall into. The classification is worth having because it predicts what a new sensor will be like before you read its datasheet.
Motion, position and force sensors
The sensors for things that move or push. Common in robotics, and the ones you will meet first in a laboratory.
Level sensors
Measuring how full something is, which is harder than it sounds and has half a dozen unrelated solutions. A good example of one problem with many physical approaches.
Thermocouples
Temperature from two dissimilar metals, and the reference junction problem that comes with it. The cold junction is the detail that catches people building their first one.
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