Control System Design

In order to make sense of issues involved in the design of motion control system, this chapter presents a short overview of control system analysis and design methods. It reviews the basic issues relevant for understanding the ideas involved in control and briefly presents the design and analysis methods which can be effectively used in motion control. Dynamics is a key element of control because both processes and controllers are dynamical systems which can be viewed in many different ways. Finally, the chapter looks at systems which do not necessarily have continuous control input and which may have finite time convergence of the control error. Such systems may exhibit motion in a selected manifold within a state space - so-called sliding mode - characterized by high frequency switching of the control input and finite time convergence to such a manifold. Controlled Vocabulary Terms combinational switching; control systems; motion control