Introduction

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu

Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Izmir Institute of Technology

Chapter 1

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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What is control?

Control is the process of altering, manually or automatically, the

performance of a system to a desired value.
Open a window and look at nature. You may not see it but control is
there.
Q. Why Control?
A. Because the systems usually do not behave the way we would like
them to.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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What is feedback?

Feedback is the process of measuring the controlled variable and using

that information to influence the value of the controlled variable.
Life itself, the ecology of our planet and the wealth of nations all
depend on intricate, precariously balanced, and poorly understood
feedback loops.
We need feedback to know how well we have done and to improve
our future behavior.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Examples of feedback control systems

Home appliances
Manufactoring
Aerospace and Military
Ecological
Transportation
Power/Energy
..
.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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Home appliances

Home heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning via thermostatic

control
Electronic sensing and control in cloth dryers
Humidity controllers
Temperature control of ovens

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Home appliances
Room temperature control

Turning on/off heater/cooler to maintain the room temperature at a

prespecified level.

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Manufactoring
Sensorequipped robots for
cutting
drilling
die casting
forging
welding
packaging
assembling
Chemical process control
Tension control of windup processes in textile mills
Conveyor speed control with optical pyrometer sensing in hot steel
rolling mills
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Manufactoring
Robotic arm

Control the voltage applied on the motors so that the robot hand
moves along a specified trajectory (and grasp some object).

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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Aerospace and military

Missile guidance and control

Automatic piloting
Spacecraft control
Tracking systems
Nuclear submarine navigation and control
Fire control systems (artillery)

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Aerospace and military

Air traffic control

Air traffic controllers give directions for pilots so that aircraft can
arrive at their destination in time and safely.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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Ecological

Wildlife management and control

Control of plant chemical wastes via monitoring lakes and rivers
Air pollution abatement
Water control and distribution
Flood control via dams and reservoirs
Forest growth management

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Ecological
Biological systems

In response to environmental signals such as nutrition level, B. subtilis

cells can produce B. subtilin to kill competing species.

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Transportation

Control of roadway vehicle traffic flows using sensors

Automatic speed control devices on automobiles
Propulsion control in rail transit systems
Building elevators and escalators

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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Transportation
Cruise control

Cruise control (also known as speed control or autocruise) is a system

that automatically controls the speed of a motor vehicle.

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Power/Energy

Power system control and planning

Feedback instrumentation in oil recovery
Optimal control of windmill blade and solar panel surfaces
Optimal power distribution via power factor control
Control of smart grids

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Power/Energy
Photovoltaic array systems

Maximum power tracking control of photovoltaic array systems.

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Types of control

Depending on whether a human body (the operator) is physically

involved in the control system, the control systems are divided into:
Manual Control:
Humanmachine interaction (i.e., driving a car).
Automatic Control:
Room temperature control (furnace in winter, air conditioner in
summer). Both of them are controlled (turned on/off) by thermostat.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Manual control system

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Manual control system

This control system is completed by the operator.

Measurement: This is essentially an estimate or appraisal of the
process being controlled by the system.
Comparison: This is an examination of the likeness of the measured
values and the desired values.
Computation: This is a calculated judgment that indicates how
much the measured value and the desired value differ and what action
and how much should be taken.
Correction: This is ultimately the materialization of the order for the
adjustment.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Automatic control system

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Automatic control system

This control system is completed automatically.
Firstly, we can use a temperature measurement device to measure the
water temperature, which replaces the hand of the operator.
Instead of manual valves, we use a special kind of valve, called a
control valve, which is driven by compressed air or electricity.
We put a device called a controller, in this case a temperature
controller, to replace the brain of the operator. This has the functions
of comparison and computation and can give orders to the control
valve.
The signal and order connections between the measurement device,
control valve and controller are transferred through cables and wires,
which replace the nerve system in the operator.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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Types of control

Openloop control:
The controller does not use a measure of the system output to be
controlled in computing the control action to take.
Closedloop control:
The controlled output is measured and fed back for the use in the
computation of the control action (also called feedback control).

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Openloop control
Openloop control is useful usually for welldefined systems in which
the mathematical model between input and the output to be
controlled is known.
It is often used in simple processes because of its simplicity and
lowcost (there is no need for a sensor to read the current state of
the plant).
Sprinkler and conventional washing machine are examples of
openloop control.
Timeoperated traffic lights are one example of openloop control,
since what the lights do or even what the traffic does cannot affect
the time mechanism that actuates the lights.
In fact, all timeoperated systems are examples of openloop control.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Mom in the Loop1

A conventional automatic home laundry is another example of openloop

control, for the degree of dirtiness of the clothes does not affect the time
they remain in the washer. On the other hand, when Mother washes the
clothes by hand, she functions as a closedloop system because the time
she takes at the task and the vigor of her action are functions of the
effectiveness of the washing operation.

G. S. Brown and D. P. Campbell, Principles of Servomechanisms, Dynamics and

Synthesis of ClosedLoop Control Systems, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, USA,
1948.
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A simple feedback system

Process or plant is the central component whose variables we want
to control.
Compensator/controller is a device that computes the control effort
to apply to the actuator, based on sensor readings.
Actuator is a device that influences controlled variable.
Disturbance is some system input which is out of our direct control.
Reference sensor measures desired system output.
Output sensor measures actual system output.

Figure: Block diagram of a furnacecontrolled room temperature controller

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Feedback control

The goal of feedback control is to use feedback to cause output of a

dynamic system to follow a reference accurately, regardless of:
the reference variables path (i.e., for all different references),
any changes in the dynamics of the process,
any external disturbances.
Control problem aims
to obtain acceptable transient response.
to obtain acceptable steady state errors.
to minimize sensitivity to parameter changes in the plant.
to reject disturbances.
Basic performance criteria are:
Stability.
Time response shape.
Frequency response shape.

Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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Design process

Transform requirements into a physical system

Draw a functional block diagram
Develop a mathematical model
Reduce the block diagram
Analyse and design

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EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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What happens if the control does not work?

Figure: August 2007, Clemson, South Carolina, USA.

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EE362 Feedback Control Systems

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What happens if the control does not work?

Figure: Trace of power increase associated with the Chernobyl disaster (April
26th, 1986).
Assoc. Prof. Enver Tatlicioglu (EEE@IYTE)

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