A Crash Course in Feedback Control; A MATLAB-based introduction with one prerequisite: high school algebra

This paper presents an overview of a recently designed and implemented introductory course on feedback control amenable to traditional and nontraditional audiences. The course material is based on fundamental concepts in dynamical systems, modeling, stability analysis, robustness to uncertainty, feedback as it occurs naturally, and the design of feedback control laws to engineer desirable static and dynamic response. The material also includes an introduction to MATLAB, provides many exercises to reinforce concepts, and concludes with a control design and simulation-based analysis to achieve wall tracking with a kinematic robot. The only prerequisite for the course is high school algebra. The authors have recently implemented the presented material in a four-week course of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) program at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). All materials are freely available online