Automatic control theory

The Automatic control theory is known as a scientific discipline with a deep mathematical background. However real life projects need just few basic principles of automatic control. This course was developed for students of engineering and managerial professions who want to know most popular practical applications of automatic control theory.

This course represents:

• basic principles of automatic control system design
• basic blocks of automatic control systems
• computation methods for adjusting automatic regulators

The course will give you the following knowledges:

• design methods for automatic control systems
• how to choose a suitable model for control system
• how to program the controller
• sensors and interfaces of control systems

The course will help to understand:

• Quality of control
• Feedback principles
• Stability analisys
• Theory of PID regulation
• Relay control
• Description in terms of transfer functions
• Models of sensors, motors and other blocks of automatic control systems
• Frequency domain analisys
• Nyquist plot 

Learning outcomes

This course helps developing basic automation skills for undergraduate students of engineering programs and graduate students in managerial programs. We discuss automatization tasks for few real objects: crane, electrical furnace, water level control. The first step will be a simple logic controller, after that we will discuss adjustment of PID controller. The next step will help you to understand why control system usually does not work the way it was promised to: we will study nonlinearities and time-delays. As a practical result of the course we offer building your own control system with usage of Arduino platform.

• Understand and differentiate basic models of control systems: linear systems, nonlinear systems, time-delay systems, time-varying systems.
• Understand basic control schemes and algorithms: feedback control, PID controller, relay controller.
• Ability to optimize and adjust controller with given structure.
• Understand analitical methods for estimation of control system stability.
• Experinence of building automatic control systems with usage of Arduino platform or Atmel 8-bit controllers.
• Develop managerial skills for automatization projects development: problem identification, seeking for the better solution, writing a schedule of the project, electrical schemes design, choosing control system components, building and testing the real control system, presentation of the project.

Course structure

The course is restructured into 5 modules: