Best computer hardware control systems books according to redditors

Check out Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems:

https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Control-Embedded-Systems-Technology/dp/0750678399/

The author is active on reddit, especially in r/embedded and r/ECE.

I’m also in the process of writing some articles and guides on this very topic that will eventually morph into a book. I’ll update this post in a little while when I have something to show.

So, robotics/mechatronics is not really my area of expertise, but what I think can be helpful is distinguishing between the different skillsets involved in the area. Companies don't really recruit just general "roboticists" or mechatronics people. Sure, you'll have a leg up if you've got some cross-disciplinary familiarity, but the closer you are to the cutting edge, the more it matters that you're really, really good at one particular thing rather than okay at all the things involved.

Again, this is not really my field, but a few of the things I'd look to focus on are:

Sensing - Almost every sensor system out there has notable room for improvement, whether that's the hardware being too expensive, too big, too low in resolution, etc. or the signal processing algorithm being too slow, too narrowly effective, or too complicated for anyone but the PhD who wrote it to implement it.

Dynamics & Controls - This is the real meat and potatoes of robotics, in my opinion. There's no one-size fits all controller, and getting this right is the make or break area for most robotics systems. Incredibly deep field, and if you're looking to do actual robotics R&D, this will be where you need to end up.

Mechanical Design - Useful, but not really a driver for most robots. Most are well within the stress/strain limitations of their materials and aren't driving for ultra lightweight construction or needing exceptionally capable on-board power generation or heat management. Major caveat - if you're doing something dynamically complex and/or aerodynamic, the line between the mechanical design and the controls aspects evaporates to nothing.

Electronics Design - Lumping in motors/actuators along with the computing hardware since for both of them you'll usually be relying on commercial off-the-shelf actuators and computational hardware, but many, many problems are being stop-gap solved by developing specialized actuators and computers until the general purpose stuff advances in performance to where the system needs it.

In sum - learn controls, and learn it really well. Some version of FPE is good as an introductory text, and FPW is a good advanced text/reference to get started. If you need more than that, hopefully you'll find yourself at a college where you can start asking people about nonlinear controls and more.

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-12th-Edition/dp/0136024580

This is the book written by my former controls professor.

Sorry for the bad advice then, send me a PM and I'll pass you my email. I have all the challenges and I'll Drop Box them to you. I imagine that they will also make them public next year as well.

A good book is Joe Weiss' one on ICS: http://www.amazon.com/Protecting-Industrial-Control-Systems-Electronic/dp/1606501976

Also look at Eric Knapp's books and NIST 800 series of whitepapers.

I learned from Modern Control Systems by Bishop and Dorf, I thought it was pretty good. Here is the newest version.

If you are a complete rookie, then I suggest you to read DSP and the Microcontroller. Very easy to read, little of math and a lot of humour (sic!).

I'm going to be frank, this is probably the worst engineering article I've ever read. I may be biased because I majored in control systems, but this article doesn't even remotely cover what would be a control systems 101 introductory lecture, it is littered with grammatical and technical inaccuracies, and is completely devoid of technical depth that someone who would bother reading the article would be interested in. It is also obvious that the submitter is also affiliated with the site, not that I have a problem with shameless self promotion but this is simply bad content.

For those who would like a good introduction to control systems, this is IMOH the best text on the subject: Modern Control Systems, R.H. Bishop. (Amazon,Torrent)

> model-based RL seems to borrow a lot of things from Control Theory, for example, LQR, iLQR, DDP

Not to mention, MPC!

Anyways a textbook I had in a digital control course was Computer Controlled Systems, in case that's any help.

Make sure you get a thorough understanding of the Kalman filter, plenty of resources for that.

hmmm well there are a lot of books that could be recommended depending on how you want your guitar tuner to work and what sort of methods you will be using to model your system as well as control it, do you want books on signal processing as well ? do you want discrete control? state space ? or just a book that will cover most bases? Either way I have put down a couple of basic texts that could help.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Control-Systems-Richard-Dorf/dp/0136024580

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Control-Engineering-International-Version/dp/0137133375/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382300545&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=control+ogatta

You are looking at an area called Control System Engineering. If you are familiar with the Laplace transform I strongly recommend reading through this book.

http://www.amazon.ca/Modern-Control-Systems-12th-Edition/dp/0136024580

Even if you do not understand the Laplace transform this book covers the material initially using traditional Differential Equations. You can get a copy online through resourceful means.

this is just about the only book that was precribed in my mechatronics programme

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-12th-Edition/dp/0136024580

cant say i actually used it apart from some last minute cram and highlighter abuse just before the exam - most of what i know and do just came from real work experience

The usual question on stackoverflow is What have you tried? Did you look thru the baseline model, which is likely some gigantic econometric panel data model e.g. to see what data you have that it doesn't consider? Are you hardware constrained, 2 week turnarounds aren't great. Did you do lit search e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Mathematics-Restructured-Electric-Systems/dp/0387234705

Control Systems Engineering, 6th Ed, Nise

Modern Control Systems, 12th Ed, Dorf & Bishop

Automatic Control Systems, 9th Ed, Golnaraghi & Kuo

Control Systems Design: An Introduction To State-Space Methods

Control Handbook, 2nd Ed

Those are some that I have. The Nise book is excellent, the Dorf book is as well, it was my primary text for Controls I & II, supplemented by the Kuo book. The latter has more on digital controls. All of those three focus primarily on classical control theory and methods, but the Nise book goes into more depth on modern methods. I got the state-space methods book because it's more focused. The Control Handbook is a beastly collection, but it's very broad, hence not possessed of much depth. It's more of a reference than a text.

If you want to dive deeply into PID control, look no further than Akstrom and Hagglund's works on the subject, it doesn't get much better.

Source: I'm a degreed EE that specialized in control systems and a licensed control systems PE.

>I like the mechanical - electrical circuits analog and how you can use diff eq to describe circuits generally, but I found few resources on how to use it more in a practical manner

Bond graphs are one way to organize thinking about cross-domain power transfer and causality

https://www.me.utexas.edu/~longoria/paynter/hmp/Bondgraphs.html

My understanding is that when you're done with the diagram, there's a formal way to write down the system of differential/integral/algebraic equations that describes the system. I've only done a little reading and haven't incorporated them in my work yet, so I don't know much about the process.

A friend of mine who sometimes uses this kind of modeling at an electric vehicle company (lots of electromechanical coupling) recommended this book to me:

https://www.amazon.com/System-Dynamics-Modeling-Simulation-Mechatronic-dp-047088908X/dp/047088908X/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=