Editorial: A special issue on active disturbance rejection control (ADRC)

摘要:

Key to any control system is a mechanism that regulates certain attributes of a dynamic system, engineered or natural. In this feld of profound impacts to all branches of engineering, know-how is distinguished from know-why, practice from understanding, and experience from knowledge. The practice of automatic control in the modern era began with the eighteenth century fyball governor, the predecessor of today's industry-dominant PID technology, and its theory with the 1868 paper of James Clerk Maxwell, titled simply “On Governors”. If the maturity of a feld of engineering is to be measured by the gap between theory and practice, control engineering is still quite young. The dominance of PID in practice, in contrast to the exponential growth in mathematical control theory since WWII, has puzzled generations of researchers and practitioners. But control is not dead, as proclaimed by some in the past. How can such a thriving feld of engineering practice be dead? It’s the science behind it that needs self-correction, and a new paradigm if you will. In comes ADRC, the subject of this special issue. If “everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence,” so does ADRC. And such justifcation is to be found in the relevance to engineering practice, we believe. Practice, after all, is the sole criterion for the truth. This recognition was a watershed moment in 1978; so is it for the reckoning in control theory.

Abstract:

Key to any control system is a mechanism that regulates certain attributes of a dynamic system, engineered or natural. In this feld of profound impacts to all branches of engineering, know-how is distinguished from know-why, practice from understanding, and experience from knowledge. The practice of automatic control in the modern era began with the eighteenth century fyball governor, the predecessor of today's industry-dominant PID technology, and its theory with the 1868 paper of James Clerk Maxwell, titled simply “On Governors”. If the maturity of a feld of engineering is to be measured by the gap between theory and practice, control engineering is still quite young. The dominance of PID in practice, in contrast to the exponential growth in mathematical control theory since WWII, has puzzled generations of researchers and practitioners. But control is not dead, as proclaimed by some in the past. How can such a thriving feld of engineering practice be dead? It’s the science behind it that needs self-correction, and a new paradigm if you will. In comes ADRC, the subject of this special issue. If “everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence,” so does ADRC. And such justifcation is to be found in the relevance to engineering practice, we believe. Practice, after all, is the sole criterion for the truth. This recognition was a watershed moment in 1978; so is it for the reckoning in control theory.