(very) Short introduction to control engineering

Control theory is a field that originates from electrical and mechanical engineering and mathematics. The field has also found its way into other technical areas such as biology, especially in neurobiology and physiology, medical technology, agricultural science, economics, and computer science.

Control theory is concerned with problems associated with the dynamic behavior of systems. These problems are about open systems, that is, systems with inputs and outputs, systems interacting with their environment. Some essential problems driving modern-day research in systems and control theory are:

• The modeling problem: The search for suitable concepts and mathematical tools to describe dynamical systems in interaction with their environment.

• The identification problem: Developing algorithms for determining dynamic models based on observations of signals.

• The filtering problem: Reconstructing the behavior of a variable from observations of signals subject to noise.

•  The control problem: Devising principles and algorithms to obtain a good controller or feedback processor.

The last problem is the link with control engineering, the applied side of the research.