Abstract

In the educational publications it is often pointed out that modeling is just another word for system understanding. Technically it can be regarded also as a system analysis. During teaching process examples usually play an important role to dynamical system understanding. To improve illustration possibilities, to encourage observation of system properties and to stimulate students' activity LABI (Laboratory of Mathematical Models of SISO and MIMO systems) graphical user interface has been developed in Matlab, through which illustrative examples and important analytical and some design functions can be accessed in a user-friendly way. They are organized in such a manner that they support and complement the lectures, exercises and students' activities which are basically organized through the so called seminars. Mathematical/simulation models and/or experiments can be divided regarding different criteria. The starting examples are usually very simple (low order, linear, stable, ...), while several of them describe also real processes, some of them are connected with the pilot plants from our laboratories (Laboratory of Modeling, Simulation and Control and Laboratory of Autonomous Mobile Systems, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia). To the set of models analytical toolbox has been added where the properties of the LTI models can be observed in a user friendly manner. These functions can be used for SISO or MIMO processes. Presented environment was well accepted by the students.