Feedback Control, Cybernetics, and Robotics

What is a Robotic System? A robotic system—a device that can measure its own state and take action based on it.

History of Feedback Control  Ancient China  two-foot-long bamboo straw which automatically regulated wine consumption!

History of Feedback Control  Greek water clock

History of Feedback Control  Drebbel’s furnace

History of Feedback Control  Bonnemain’s chickens

History of Feedback Control  Windmills and fantails

History of Feedback Control  Watt’s centrifugal flyball “Governor”  The breakthrough in effectiveness and public recognition.  Built on the windmill and water regulation principles.  Huge impact on the Industrial Revolution

The Governor  Applying a known principle to a new application

Control Engineering Closed-loop control  Cruise control

Control Engineering  WWII advances achieved out of need for survival  Radar  Guided missles  Automatic pilots

Control Engineering  Norden Bombsight  Ending the war in both Europe and the Pacific

Soviet Union  Sputnik 1957  International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)  First meeting held in Moscow 1960

US Response  The era of Modern Control begins with the Kalman Filter  combining and filtering information from multiple sensor sources  Highly accurate mathematic formula  Navigation systems transformed

Modern Control  Microprocessor 1969  Industrial process control  Relies less on engineering intuition and more on internal system design

Classical vs. Modern Systems  Linear time-invariant systems  Design done graphically by hand  Involves a great deal of intuition  Design process is an engineering art  An exact description of the internal system dynamics is needed  A good knowledge of matrices and linear algebra is required