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by fwdpropaganda 2900 days ago
Hey, you seem to know a bit about the subject. What is the reason for the name "feedback systems"? (I understand a name is just a name, but the fact that I don't understand why that name was picked suggests to me that I'm missing something.)

EDIT: From that book: The term feedback refers to a situation in which two (or more) dynamical systems are connected together such that each system influences the other and their dynamics are thus strongly coupled." So.... the whole system is governed by a system of coupled differencial equations...? This is so broad it's almost meaningless.

1 comments

A feedback control system, aka a "closed-loop" control system is one in which the actual output is sampled and compared to the desired output and the "controller" adjusts the system gain to reduce the error (difference between actual and desired outputs).

i.e., a portion of the output is "fed back" to the input to obtain that difference between actual and desired output.

Does that help?