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2021, 10th May

History and Current Trends on Control System

Control systems are the basis of many inventions which play an important role in the
advancement of modern technology that has become more influential in current times. Among
its functions that help people perform daily activities spanning various fields including daily
home appliances like refrigerators, automatic rice cookers, washing machines, and industrial
needs like the manufacturing sectors such as vehicle factories, shoe factories, robotics and other
needs like those used in the military sector, medical sector, electro-generation sector,
astronomy and so on. Control theories commonly used today are classical control theory (also
called conventional control theory), modern control theory, and robust control theory. Control
system, means by which a variable quantity or set of variable quantities is made to conform to
a prescribed norm. It either holds the values of the controlled quantities constant or causes them
to vary in a prescribed way. A control system may be operated by electricity, by mechanical
means, by fluid pressure (liquid or gas), or by a combination of means. When a computer is
involved in the control circuit, it is usually more convenient to operate all of the control systems
electrically, although intermixtures are fairly common.

Control Systems were Automatic first developed over two thousand years ago. The first
feedback control device on record is thought to be the ancient water clock of Ktesibios in
Alexandria Egypt around the third century B.C. It kept time by regulating the water level in a
vessel and, therefore, the water flow from that vessel. This certainly was a successful device as
water clocks of similar design were still being made in Baghdad when the Mongols captured
the city in 1258 A.D. A variety of automatic devices have been used over the centuries to
accomplish useful tasks or simply to just entertain. The latter includes the automata, popular in
Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, featuring dancing figures that would repeat the same
task over and over again; these automata are examples of open-loop control. Milestones among
feedback, or "closed-loop" automatic control devices, include the temperature regulator of a
furnace attributed to Drebbel, circa 1620, and the centrifugal flyball governor used for
regulating the speed of steam engines by James Watt in 1788. The Dutch windmill of the 17th
century was kept facing the wind by the action of an auxillary vane that moved the entire upper
part of the mill. The most famous example from the Industrial Revolution is James Watt’s
flyball governor of 1769, a device that regulated steam flow to a steam Engine to maintain
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constant engine speed despite a changing load. In his 1868 paper "On Governors", J. C.
Maxwell (who discovered the Maxwell electromagnetic field equations) was able to explain
instabilities exhibited by the flyball governor using differential equations to describe the
control system. This demonstrated the importance and usefulness of mathematical models and
methods in understanding complex phenomena, and signaled the beginning of mathematical
control and systems theory. Elements of control theory had appeared earlier but not as
dramatically and convincingly as in Maxwell's analysis. Maxwell’s work was soon generalized
and control theory developed by a number of contributions, including a notable study of the
automatic steering system of the U.S. battleship “New Mexico,” published in 1922. The 1930s
saw the development of electrical feedback in long-distance telephone amplifiers and of the
general theory of the servomechanism, by which a small amount of power controls a very large
amount and makes automatic corrections. The pneumatic controller, basic to the development
of early automated systems in the chemical and petroleum industries, and the analog
computer followed. All of these developments formed the basis for elaboration of control-
system theory and applications during World War II such as anti-aircraft batteries and fire-
control systems.

There are various cases in industrial control practice in which theoretical automatic control
methods are not yet sufficiently advanced to design an automatic control system or completely
to predict its effects. This situation is true of the very large, highly interconnected systems such
as occur in many industrial plants. In this case, operations research (q.v.), a mathematical
technique for evaluating possible procedures in a given situation, can be of value .In
determining the actual physical control system to be installed in an industrial plant,
the instrumentation or control-system engineer has a wide range of possible equipment and
methods to use. We may choose to use a set of analogue-type instruments, those that use a
continuously varying physical representation of the signal involved—i.e., a current, a voltage,
or an air pressure. Devices built to handle such signals, generally called conventional devices,
are capable of receiving only one input signal and delivering one output correction. Hence they
are usually considered single-loop systems, and the total control system is built up of a
collection of such devices. Analogue-type computers are available that can consider several
variables at once for more complex control functions. These are very specific in their
applications, however, and thus are not commonly used. With the development of very reliable
models in the late 1960s, digital computers quickly became popular elements of industrial-
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plant-control systems. Computers are applied to industrial control problems in three ways: for
supervisory or ; direct digital control; and hierarchy control.
Intelligent Control: This is by far the most interesting topic about the modernized control
system. Control systems is concerned with designing strategies for modeling and constructing
automated systems, and controlling them. While for simpler goals and constraints this can be
achieved through rigorous, explicit mathematical instructions (thinking about a robot, for
example) for more complex tasks, conventional control just doesn’t work. We can’t explicitly
program a car to navigate itself through a road while obeying traffic rules in any feasible
amount of time. Yes, control does have some more sophisticated control strategies than
“mindless,” control like PID, such as Model Predictive Control (MPC), which optimizes
system input based on analyzing predicted system output. But even these are very limited when
compared to the capabilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods. That’s
where intelligent control comes in. Integrating new techniques from artificial intelligence and
machine learning to conventional control system design.
Hybrid Control: Prior to hybrid control, control was strictly applied to either discrete or
continuous dynamical systems. But this posed a problem, because most modern control
systems contain discrete and continuous parts, not just one of the two. For example, thinking
about a computer which is using some algorithm to optimize control input for a vehicle. The
vehicle’s dynamics are continuous, but the computer’s actions occur discretely. Since most
modern systems contain both discrete dynamical components and continuous dynamical
components, hybrid control was developed, which is capable of modeling hybrid control
systems (control for hybrid dynamical systems, where “hybrid dynamical,” means both
continuous and discretely evolving parts).

Control systems have become a major component of the automation of production lines in
modern factories. Automation began in the late 1940s with the development of the transfer
machine, a mechanical device for moving and positioning large objects on a production line
(e.g., partly finished automobile engine blocks). Apart from the above needs, the human self
also works as control systems. The human heart works to control the blood circulation to the
whole body. Besides that, the lymph created by God functions as a glucose regulator in our
blood while the brains act as a guard who allows a person to think and take appropriate actions
in certain matters. Imagine if one of these control systems go haywire in a person, that person
will surely be unwell or in other words his condition is unstable. Hence, he will fall ill and his
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condition will deteriorate if he continues to be untreated, which may even lead to death. The
same applies to machineries. For instance, a robot may react to hit itself or whatever is in its
midst if the robot’s control systems face problems. Therefore, with a good modern control
system, it can be directed to perform certain duties automatically and precisely.

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