Daniel Cobb Associate Professor Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Courses Education Fields of Interest Publications Awards & Honors Summary Files and Links For additional information, see my

Contact Information

3621 Engineering Hall 1415 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706

Tel: 608/262-9840 Fax: 608/265-4623 E-mail: cobb@engr.wisc.edu

Program Affiliations

• Electrical and Computer Engineering

Courses

• ECE 230: Circuit Analysis
• ECE 330: Signals and Systems
• ECE 332: Feedback Control Systems
• ECE 334: State Space Systems Analysis
• ECE 409: Introductory Feedback Control Laboratory
• ECE 417: Digital Control
• ECE 717: Linear Systems
• ECE 818: Analysis and Design of Linear Multivariable Feedback Systems
• ECE 821: Optimal Control and Variational Methods

Education

• BS, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, 1975
• MS, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 1977
• PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 1980

Fields of Interest

• analog and digital control theory
• robust control of high bandwidth systems
• singular perturbation theory
• singular dynamical systems

Publications

See my curriculum vitae .

Selected Awards, Honors and Societies

See my curriculum vitae .

Summary

The subject of feedback control addresses a technique commonly used in engineering to enhance the performance of a physical device or process. The basic idea is to gather information from sensors which measure pertinent system variables, process that information (typically using an on-board microcomputer), and then send signals to actuators which drive the system in a manner consistent with good performance. This feedback "loop" automatically adjusts the behavior of the system to compensate for a variety of unpredictable events. Simple examples of the technique include the temperature regulation system of a house and cruise control on an automobile. Indeed, feedback systems pervade many fields such as transportation, robotics, manufacturing, and power generation and distribution; they also appear in numerous consumer products. Nevertheless, most people are unaware of their existence (unless they malfunction!).

A well-designed feedback loop can also compensate for inaccuracy in the mathematical description of the system under control. In this sense, feedback control can be "robust". In particular, every mathematical model inevitably neglects some high-frequency dynamics or "parasitic" effects. This is necessary for the sake of model tractability; also, such dynamics are notoriously diffcult to measure. There are in fact some systems whose bandwidth depends heavily on parasitics, appearing, for all intents and purposes, to have infinite bandwidth. This simply means that the bandwidth is larger than the engineer is able or willing to measure reliably. Hence, control engineers are sometimes confronted with the problem of analyzing a feedback loop having uncertain bandwidth. Little or no theory exists which addresses such situations. This is the niche in which I am presently working.

In addition to my theoretical investigation of the problem described above, I have also recently been engaged in the development of the ECE Feedback Control Laboratory .

Files and Links of Interest

• ECE Graduate Curriculum in Control Systems
• ECE Undergraduate Curriculum in Control Systems

Copyright 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: Thursday, 11-Nov-2004 18:10:40 CST Content by: cobb@engr.wisc.edu UW-Madison : COE : ECE : ECE Site Map UPDATE PROFILE