Feedback and Control for Everyone

This well structured, intriguing and motivating book presents the basic ideas and understanding of control, signals and systems for readers interested in engineering and science. Through a series of examples that are regularly revisited from different perspectives, the book explores both the theory and the practice of control."Feedback and Control for Everyone" is indeed intended for everyone, but more specifically everyone interested in getting a feel for the role control and feedback play in our environment. Control and feedback are pervasive and are literally found everywhere in our engineered or biological environment.

The book focuses on the main ideas and opens the scientific mind to feedback, control and systems dynamics. The exposition of ideas does not assume any mathematical knowledge beyond what typically is taught at an intermediate mathematics level at high school. Appealing to examples and intuition, the authors guide the reader to the essential ingredients todescribe, analyze and synthesize successfully feedback. Each chapter ends with comments and references that enable the interested reader to explore the exposed subject material in a deeper manner.

"Feedback and Control for Everyone" is written for:

* understanding basic concepts on systems dynamics and control

* realizing the strong connection between technical and human/social dynamics

* motivating further reading and study about control systems

* showing the power of abstraction to infer properties of complex systems based on simplified mathematical models

* emphasizing the interplay between communication, computers and control in this Digital Era

* creating bridges among different sciences and technologies such as engineering, physics, biology, biochemistry, or systems dynamics.

Credits: the Cover Illustration and Heading chapters were designed by Arturo Mora (www.cut-out.es)

• Control
• Control Design
• Control Implementation
• Feedback
• Signal
• Signals and Systems
• analog
• calculus
• communication
• complex system
• complex systems
• computer
• design
• mathematics
• stability

From the reviews:

“The authors succeeded in presenting the so-called mathematically stuffed field of control to understand and appreciate the basic idea of all pervasive feedback and control, signals and systems. … It is a welcome addition … to introduce the ideas of feedback and control to ‘everyone’ literally.” (D. Subbaram Naidu, Amazon.com, December, 2013)

“The book is to explain in layperson’s terms the essence of feedback and the basic tenets of the field of systems and control. … The book is carefully edited with highlighted text to summarize the key points. … the wealth of physical examples to illustrate the ideas and concepts make it an excellent source for anyone who wants to learn what the subject of feedback control is all about. It can also serve as a useful companion in elementary and intermediate courses on the subject.” (Jan C. Willems, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol. 31, August, 2011)

“Feedback and Control for Everyone certainly serves the authors’ intentions and goals of writing feedback and controls for everyone. … book introduces almost all of the basic concepts of feedback, signals, and controls. Various simple and meaningful examples are employed to illustrate the fundamental elements of feedback and control theory, which is beneficial to readers with no or limited control knowledge. … It is a great book for anyone who is interested in getting a taste of what control engineering is all about … .” (Lihong Zhao, International Journal of Acoustics and Vibration, Vol. 16 (1), 2011)

“A very useful textbook which reflects the vast teaching and research experience of the authors in the field of control engineering. … Educators may use the book … for lectures on systems and control at an introductory level … . Students will have a generous companion for individual work whenever they aim at a better insight into the applicability of the theoretical results and principles. Engineers … have a great opportunity to get familiar with the key elements of system dynamics and control design.” (Octavian Pastravanu, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1218, 2011)

“The objective of this very insightful, atypical book is to explain the basic concepts of control and feedback theory to nonspecialists. … With the aid of the examples … this book describes nearly all of the fundamental elements of control theory in a way that a broad range of readers can comprehend and appreciate. … Summing Up: Recommended. Two-year technical program students and general readers.” (E. M. Aupperle, Choice, Vol. 48 (1), September, 2010)

• Department of Systems Engineering and Control, University Politecnica Valencia , Valencia, Spain

  Pedro Albertos

• Melbourne School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne , Melbourne, Australia

  Iven Mareels

Pedro Albertos was IFAC president 1999-2002.

Iven Mareels is EiC of Systems&Control Letters, Elsevier.

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