Using clear tutorial examples, this fully-updated new edition concentrates on explaining and illustrating the concepts that are at the heart of control theory.
It seeks to develop a robust understanding of the underlying principles around which the control subject is built. This simple framework is studded with references to more detailed treatments and with interludes that are intended to inform and entertain.
The book is intended as a companion on the journey through control theory and although the early chapters concentrate on fundamental ideas such as feedback and stability, later chapters deal with more advanced topics such as state variables, optimisation, estimation, Kalman filtering and robust control.
Undergraduates in a variety of disciplines seeking to learn the basics of control. Also relevant to economists, scientists, engineers (academic or industrial) and electrical and control engineers.
Control concepts: a non-mathematical introduction;
Control design ideas: a non-mathematical treatment;
Synthesis of automatic feedback control loops: a more quantitative view;
How the Laplace transform greatly simplifies system representation and manipulation;
Frequency response methods;
Limits to performance;
Some practical aspects of control design, implementation and justification;
Discrete time and digital control systems;
Multivariable linear systems and the state space approach;
Links between state space and classical viewpoints;
State estimation: observers and the Kalman filter and prediction;
An introduction to robust control design using H∞ and related methods;
A miscellany of control techniques;
Review: the development of the control systems discipline and the mathematical roots of control systems theory