Control Engineering from Classical to Intelligent Control Theory—An Overview

Abstract

Control engineering is the engineering discipline that refers to the use of automatic control. This discipline has been intensively enlarging over the past decades due to technological advances and technology affordability. Nowadays, almost all engineering activities exploit automatic control. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide the core knowledge concerning some of the most important features in control design and its methods. It covers basic information to introduce the readers to the other chapters of this volume. Fundamental system properties and specifications for control design such as robustness and stability are explained. In addition to a broad overview of modern control techniques with explicative examples and reference publications, the chapter focuses on four intelligent control techniques, which are fuzzy logic control, neural networks, metaheuristics control tuning, and multi-agent systems. Perspective and new trends of research are also exposed for each presented control technique as well as for control systems in general.