Introduction to Intelligent and Autonomous Control

Book excerpt: The area of intelligent control is a fusion of a number of research areas in engineering computer science and mathematics, which has evolved from conventional control to enhance the existing nonlinear, optimal, adaptive and stochastic control methods. Intelligent control techniques are currently being utilized for closed-loop feedback control in space-based applications, manufacturing systems, robotic systems, avionic systems, among others, to improve system performance, reliability and efficiency. Overall, the primary objective of intelligent control is to enhance the performance of the system to the extent that it achieves some level of autonomous control.