Control Theory – Mathematical Association of America

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Series in FDWK

By David Bressoud @dbressoud As of 2024, new Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month. FDWK refers to Ross Finney, Frank Demana, Bert Waits, and Dan Kennedy, the team of authors who for many years and multiple editions updated Cal culus: Graphical, Numerical, Algebraic, one of the most popular textbooks for the College...

Pop Culture as a Gateway to Research: Expanding Belonging in Mathematics

By Qianyi Jiang, Niharika Nirankari, Monica Morales Hernandez Undergraduate students often experience mathematics as a sequence of courses centered on technique, correctness, and speed. Research, when it appears at all, usually shows up later — after students have racked up enough credentials to be granted permission to ask questions. This structure privileges speed, prior access,...

Control Problems for Conservation Laws with Traffic Applications

Control theory develops analyses, creates models, and produces designs that enable dynamical systems to achieve certain desirable behaviors using feedback and control methods. It has a strong theoretical basis in mathematics, and it is widely used in several engineering disciplines. This book is aimed at graduate students. The authors suggest that it is also accessible...

Dynamic Optimization for Beginners

“Dynamic optimization”, in general terms, usually refers to optimization of quantities in systems that change in time. The authors never define it explicitly, but the book’s contents suggest that to them it means primarily a combination of the calculus of variations and control theory. The authors say that they are addressing two different sets of...

Book Cover of Dynamic Optimization for Beginners ...

Linear Time-Invariant Systems, Behaviors and Modules

Many engineering students take a required course in systems engineering. Such a course includes topics such as linear time-invariant systems of differential equations, signals, networks, the Laplace transform, transfer functions and a bit of control theory. This book addresses many of these subjects, but it approaches them from a very abstract point of view. Already...

Direct Methods in Control Problems

Control theory aims to design and develop mathematical models for controlling systems that arise in a variety of processes, including engineering and machine control. Its goal is to provide methods and algorithms, preferably stable and optimal, for achieving a path from a starting point to a target state. In this book the author notes that...

Cover of 'Direct Methods in Control Problems' by Peter Falb, featuring a minimalist design with the title and author's name prominently displayed on a solid background.

Hybrid Feedback Control

Classical control theory has been very successful for analysis of closed-loop systems and the creation of feedback controllers. It has provided a collection of very powerful tools, useful primarily when systems operate in either continuous-time or discrete-time. Developments in technology, however, have changed the environment quite a bit. The classical feedback picture of system and...

Cover of the book "Hybrid Feedback Control" by Ricardo G. Sanfelice. The design features two aerial images of kayakers navigating through whitewater rapids on a rocky river, suggesting dynamic and complex systems. The images are connected with diagrammatic arrows, emphasizing the flow and feedback aspects of control systems.

Introduction to Mathematical Systems Theory

The authors have taught a course on systems theory, control and identification for several years in the Netherlands. This book, now in its second edition, developed from that experience. Their students came from mathematics, computer science, economics and business mathematics. In the U.S. many engineering students are required to take a course like this, but...