However, control theory turned out to be my favorite class. Learning how negative feedback loops are everywhere was an eye opener.
Also learning Laplace transforms was one of my first “holy shit this is freaking clever and cool” moments. Just like how parity bits in data streams can be used to detect AND correct errors.
It should be pretty obvious that you cannot overcome constraints by moving even harder in the direction of the constraint, which is what the integral term does.
I just think this gives much better results. The model can be as simple or complex as you need, and we aren’t trapped in the linear response range. PID is good enough for many tasks, but it’s never good.
If you can model your problem with linear differential equations then control theory replaces the need for tuning. The coefficients you need just pop directly out of the analysis.
I was working as an SW Engr and taking a set of courses towards a Mechatronics certificate (my employer did a lot of motion control work) and I had to basically take updated versions of the same classes. The lab instructor was an about-to-retire engineer from Schunk, and he did an amazing job of explaining what the theory meant in terms of real-world behavior. That's when it all finally sunk in and I could look at the math and "see" how a mechanism would respond.
I wonder, how much control theory is there in CPU?
One minor caveat is that most CPUs nowadays contain phase-locked loop (PLL) clock multipliers. Those fall into the domain of control theory but strictly speaking they're not part of the logic.
I maybe had the most trouble just figuring out which instantiated PLL in the chip belonged to which PLL design, and where someone stuck the documentation in the giant repo. Especially since a hardware designer may think, oh we don’t need to update the docs, “nothing changed,” but the PLLs did change names because of a process change and their parameters may have changed slightly, even if they’re essentially the same. And chasing down small changes and documenting them ends up being a lot of the job in software.
To me EE = heavy math and that’s what makes it so fun.
I actually do software now but it’s completely different. There’s like no math in most applications of it. Putting something together with a Rasp Pi or Arduino feels like 98% software and 2% EE.
