automatic control system
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CT: Automatic Control Systems provides engineers with a fresh new controls book that places special emphasis on mechatronics. It follows a revolutionary approach by actually including a physical lab. In addition, readers will find authoritative coverage of modern design tools and examples. Current mechatronics applications build motivation to learn the material. Extensive use of virtual lab software is also integrated throughout the chapters. Engineers will gain a strong understand of control systems with the help of modern examples and exercises.

S: http://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Control-Systems-Farid-Golnaraghi/dp/0470048964 (last access: 29 December 2014)

N: Automatic feedback control systems have been known and used for more than 2000 years; some of the earliest examples are water clocks described by Vitruvius and attributed to Ktesi­bios (circa 270 B.C.). Some three hundred years later, Heron of Alexandria described a range of automata which employed a variety of feedback mechanisms. The word “feedback” is a 20th century neologism introduced in the 1920s by radio engineers to describe parasitic, positive feeding back of the signal from the output of an amplifier to the input circuit. It has entered into common usage in the English-speaking world during the latter half of the century.
Automatic feedback is found in a wide range of systems; Rufus Oldenburger, in 1978, when recalling the foundation of IFAC, commented on both the name and the breadth of the subject: “I felt that the expression ‘automatic control’ covered all systems, because all systems involve variables, and one is concerned with keeping these variables at constant or given varying values. This amounts to concern about control of these variables even though no actual automatic control devices may be intentionally or otherwise incorporated in these systems. I was thinking of biological, economic, political as we\1 as engineering systems so that I pictured the scope ofIFAC as a very broad one.

S: http://ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1996/june1996/02-HistoryofAutoCtrl.pdf (last access: 29 December 2014)

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CR: automatic control engineering, robotics.