The Map of Control Theory

All of control theory in one map.  The idea behind this map is not to capture everything within control theory, it is to highlight some of the main areas of the field and provide a few...

The Kalman Filter

This article introduces the Kalman filter at a high level and tries to provide some insight into how the filter is able to estimate state by combining measurements and models. 

This is an...

How a Kalman Filter Works in Pictures

This article builds up some intuition about the Kalman filter using pictures before diving into the mathematics.  A beginner will come away with an understanding of what the Kalman filter is...

Radar Tutorial (English)

This page provides a detailed overview of radar principles and technologies, including mathematical, physical and technical explanations. “Radartutorial” explains the fundamentals of radar...

An Introduction to the Kalman Filter

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical introduction to the discrete Kalman filter. This introduction includes a description and some discussion of the basic discrete Kalman...

Introduction to Noise Filtering

Introduction to filtering - moving average, first-order, anti-aliasing, set point softening

Introducing Feedback Control to Middle and High School STEM Students, Part 2...

This paper was presented at the 2019 IFAC Advances on Control Education Conference (IFAC-ACE), Philadelphia, PA, USA, July 7-9, 2019, and is in the conference proceedings. This paper aims at...

System Identification Overview

System identification is a methodology for building mathematical models of dynamic systems using measurements of the input and output signals of the system.  This overview from Mathworks...

Introducing Feedback Control to Middle and High School STEM Students, Part 1...

This paper was presented at the 2019 IFAC Advances on Control Education Conference (IFAC-ACE), Philadelphia, PA, USA, July 7-9, 2019, and is in the conference proceedings. This paper aims at...

Discrete Fourier Transform

The discrete Fourier transform, or DFT, is the primary tool of digital signal processing. The foundation of the product is the fast Fourier transform (FFT), a method for computing the DFT...

What's a Control System and Why Should I Care? A whirlwind tour through the ...

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...

Kalman Filter Design

This example shows how to perform Kalman filtering. Both a steady state filter and a time varying filter are designed and simulated.

Introduction: PID Controller Design

In this tutorial we will introduce a simple, yet versatile, feedback compensator structure: the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller. The PID controller is widely employed...

Thoughts on Furthering the Control Education of Practicing Engineers

This paper was presented at the 2019 IFAC Advances on Control Education Conference (IFAC-ACE), Philadelphia, PA, USA, July 7-9, 2019, and is in the conference proceedings. This paper aims to...

How Kalman Filters Work, Part 1

This article looks at four popular estimation filter architectures: particle filter, sigma point filter, extended Kalman filter, and the Kalman filter. It discusses how all four of these...

Using Simscape™ to Model a Quanser QUBE-Servo 2 with Friction

Modelling a DC servomotor is one of the common examples used in control system textbooks and courses. Given that so many systems use DC motors, e.g. robot manipulator arms, it’s an important...

MATLAB Function: phased.MVDRBeamformer

The phased.MVDRBeamformer System object™ implements a narrowband minimum-variance distortionless-response (MVDR) beamformer. The MVDR beamformer is also called the Capon beamformer. An MVDR...

Improving the Beginner's PID - Introduction

In conjunction with the release of the new Arduino PID Library Brett has released this series of posts that explain his PID code. He start's with what he call's “The Beginner’s PID.”  He...

TCLab PID Control

Implement a PID controller on the Temperature Control Lab hardware to drive the temperature from room temperature to 60 degrees C. This resource lets you attempt the design yourself first...

How Simulations Work

This article sets out the critical aspects of building good simulations — that is, simulations that are accurate, easy to develop and analyze, and fast. The first sections deal with how a...

Nonlinear Model Identification

Mathwork overview page describing nonlinear model identification. Use nonlinear model identification when a linear model does not completely capture your system dynamics. You can identify...

Algorithms to Antenna: Increasing Angular Resolution Using MIMO Radar

Articles in Microwaves & RF that talks about how forming virtual arrays with multiple-input, multiple-output waveforms makes it possible to generate more focused beam patterns.

What's a Control System and Why Should I Care?

This paper is designed as a primer for college level STEM students about to take their first formal class in feedback control systems. This means that the explanations assume the reader has...

Using the Reinforcement Learning Toolbox™ to Balance an Inverted Pendulum

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a subset of Machine Learning that uses dynamic data, not static data like unsupervised learning or supervised learning. Reinforcement learning is used in many...

Road Sign Detection using Transfer Learning on RetinaNet

This blog outlines a number of open-source resources for transfer learning that are worthy of exploring, ands show the result of using transfer learning on RetinaNet to develop a road sign...