ComputerAutomated Control System Design

Abstract

With cost efficiency a technological imperative today, the future impact of control technology does not depend on new algorithms and theories alone. Such developments need to be employed rapidly, reducing the time involved in deploying controllers for new applications. Furthermore, the insertion of advanced control on a large scale cannot require significant numbers of highly skilled (e.g., Ph.D.-degreed) staff. Thus control technology must be packaged in a form that allows small teams of control engineers to efficiently exploit new research developments and to minimize the cycle time from specification to product. It is a sign of the maturity of control that this packaging is now being accomplished through the development of computer-aided control system design (CACSD) tools. In industries where customized control applications are a frequent demand, CACSD tools that automate several of the steps involved in the practice of control design are now regularly used. At the same time, research continues toward the goal of end-to-end (specification to deployment-ready software) control design automation. No practicing control engineer today can afford to be ignorant of CACSD; it must be considered as much a part of one's professional education as, say, the first course in nonlinear control. This chapter provides an introduction to CACSD, with specific emphasis on control design automation. System modeling, performance specifications by way of mathematical criteria, and iterative algorithms for realizing an ultimately satisfactory controller are among the topics covered. In other chapters in this volume, the state of the art and current research trends in CACSD are discussed in depth from the perspective of two control application domains???-???automotive powertrain control (Chapter 12) and flight control (Chapter 13). The latter application is also used to illustrate the general observations in this chapter.