An introduction to servo pneumatic positioning: an interactive multimedia program development supporting outcome-driven engineering assessment

Servo pneumatics retains the advantages of standard pneumatics and adds the opportunity for closed-loop controlled, programmable positioning to within fractions of a millimeter in systems in which positions can be approached rapidly and without overshoot, stability under variable loads and conditions, and adaptive control for optimized positioning. Our challenge was to create an interactive multimedia program that could communicate exciting technical material to interested parties, including students and academia, professional design, industrial and manufacturing systems engineers, marketing and sales engineers and managers in a non-linear, enjoyable fashion. Our approach was that of interactive multimedia on CD-ROM, allowing the integration of text, color images, videos and animation for the purpose of following an engineering problem-solving approach, both when modeling, as well as when illustrating real-world solutions with interactive digital videos. Furthermore, this article introduces outcome-driven assessment principles (as defined by the American Accreditation Board of Engineering Education) as the key to our educational multimedia design objectives. It illustrates open-loop controlled pneumatic and closed-loop controlled servo pneumatic positioning systems, their components, their programming and some of their applications.