MA30061 Control Theory, 2024–2025

Mark Opmeer

Contents

Introduction

This module is a natural follow-on from the second year module MA20220 Ordinary Differential Equations and Control. We will study linear differential equations mainly using matrices. In the first seven chapters we will be explicitly solving some differential equations, but in the later chapters we will avoid this and only do computations with matrices which guarantee certain properties of the solutions of the differential equations. For this we will use some theorems that we will not prove.

We will illustrate some things with figures, those are not examinable. There are also some sections with “real world examples” which give an indication where differential equations of a certain type arise, these sections are also not examinable. Furthermore, there are some sections which are “case studies” illustrating the material using actual engineering or bio-medical applications; those sections are also not examinable.