ACE-Lab was demonstrated at the Practical Engineering Education Conference 2026 at the University of Edinburgh, providing an opportunity to discuss practical approaches to control engineering education with colleagues from across engineering higher education.
The event also provided an opportunity to reflect on the role that ACE-Lab should play within the learning process.
ACE-Lab was originally developed to help students understand the fundamental processes involved in automatic control engineering through practical, hands-on experimentation.
The intention is not for the ACE-Lab hardware itself to become the final application. Instead, it provides a controlled and accessible environment in which learners can build confidence with fundamental ideas before progressing towards more complex engineering systems.
For example, learners might first investigate sensing, actuation, feedback, controller tuning and system behaviour using an ACE-Lab exercise before transferring that understanding to a larger application such as an autonomous vehicle.
This creates a learning journey from control theory → practical understanding → applied engineering.
The demonstration at PEE2026 therefore reinforced an important principle within the continuing development of ACE-Lab: the equipment is a tool for learning rather than the destination.
Its value lies in providing a bridge between abstract control theory and the more complex engineering applications in which that theory must ultimately be used.
