🚀 go-pugleaf

In article ... Frans van Otten writes:

>I wrote:
>... if you have a very accurate map ... you can calculate exactly
>what will happen ... Or is the driving not called "controlling"
>in this case ?
>
>Barry Kort responded:
>
>... after a while, you will no longer have an accurate estimate
>of your actual location on the terrain ...
>
>It is a good point, but for short trips the accuracy may be
>sufficient.  So I ask my question again:  Is the driving not
>(limited) controlling in the short-trip case ?

In control theory, there is open-loop and closed-loop control.
Sometimes open-loop control is useful, but when disturbances are
present, it usually won't work. Closed-loop control is also called
feedback control. If the disturbances are known beforehand or can
be measured, the controller may compensate for them. This is called
feed-forward control, and is sometimes combined with feedback. All
of this, and more, is control, i.e., belongs to control theory.

-- 
Jan Eric Larsson                      JanEric@Control.LTH.Se      +46 46 108795
Department of Automatic Control
Lund Institute of Technology         "We watched the thermocouples dance to the
Box 118, S-221 00 LUND, Sweden        spirited tunes of a high frequency band."