What's a Control System and Why Should I Care? A whirlwind tour through the basics of control systems for students about to take that first class ,

Dr. Daniel Y. Abramovitch, Agilent Technologies, American Automatic Control Council Education Committe Chair

60 min

Beginner

Article / Blog

Theory

Link to External Site

https://dabramovitch.com/pubs/what_is_ctrl_n_why_college_stem_1.pdf

This paper aims to provide some introduction, a cheat sheet, and some context for college level STEM students about to take that first controls class. In some cases, it provides context after the fact for folks who have taken that first controls class.

This document contains a lot of the missing context for why one bit of theory pops up in a controls class, only to be forgotten the next week.

This resource is included in the following topics and journeys:

Topic
Journeys

6 items

Feedback Control

Feedback is extensively used in control theory, using a variety of methods including state space (controls), full state feedback, and so forth. Note that in the context of control theory, "feedback" is traditionally assumed to specify "negative feedback". The most common general-purpose controller using a control-loop feedback mechanism is a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. Heuristically, the terms of a PID controller can be interpreted as corresponding to time: the... See More

Transfer Function

In engineering, a transfer function (also known as system function or network function) of an electronic or control system component is a mathematical function which theoretically models the device's output for each possible input. In its simplest form, this function is a two-dimensional graph of an independent scalar input versus the dependent scalar output, called a transfer curve or characteristic curve. Transfer functions for components are used to design and analyze systems assembled from... See More

Routh-Hurwitz Criterion

In control system theory, the Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion is a mathematical test that is a necessary and sufficient condition for the stability of a linear time-invariant (LTI) control system. The Routh test is an efficient recursive algorithm that English mathematician Edward John Routh proposed in 1876 to determine whether all the roots of the characteristic polynomial of a linear system have negative real parts. German mathematician Adolf Hurwitz independently proposed in 1895 to... See More

Bode Plot

In electrical engineering and control theory, a Bode plot is a graph of the frequency response of a system. It is usually a combination of a Bode magnitude plot, expressing the magnitude (usually in decibels) of the frequency response, and a Bode phase plot, expressing the phase shift. As originally conceived by Hendrik Wade Bode in the 1930s, the plot is an asymptotic approximation of the frequency response, using straight line segments. from Bode Plot - Wikipedia See More

Control Systems Engineering

Control systems play a critical role in space flight Control engineering or control systems engineering is an engineering discipline that applies control theory to design equipment and systems with desired behaviors in control environments. The discipline of controls overlaps and is usually taught along with electrical engineering and mechanical engineering at many institutions around the world. The practice uses sensors and detectors to measure the output performance of the process being... See More

Feedback Principles

Feedback principles are the broad and fundamental concepts that underlay all systems (both human made and in nature) which rely on feedback for their proper operation. While the specific application, models, parameters, and conditions of any one system/environment can dramatically alter the behavior of the feedback dependent system, the principles themselves are immutable. Furthermore, while learning the mathematics needed to do most control design and control systems engineering is complicated... See More

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