In a previous post we discussed how the principles of operation of a balance scale could be understood as a feedback loop with integral action. We left off after analyzing the impact of measurement disturbances in the loop and mentioned that input disturbances could be used to model “operator errors.”
Continue reading “Balance scales and integral action. Part II”Tag: integral action
Balance scales and integral action. Part I
You can find many accounts of the history of feedback control in books, articles, and online. Some will go back to Greek and Arab antiquity to identify proportional feedback in water clocks, wind mills, advancing to the industrial revolution and the Watt governor. In virtually all of those accounts the feedback loop involves continuous-time signals. So I find it interesting that there is device that man has been using for millennia that requires a discrete-time feedback algorithm and integral action for its operation. That device is a balance scale.
Continue reading “Balance scales and integral action. Part I”