Page - (000108) - in Control Theory Tutorial - Basic Concepts Illustrated by Software Examples

14.4 FutureDirections 105 Formany years, neural networks seemed like a promising approach for control design and for many other applications. However, that approach typically faced variouspracticalchallengesinimplementation.Untilrecently,thepracticalproblems meant thatothermethodsoftenworkedbetter inapplications. Newmethods and increased computational power havemade neural networks themost promising approach formajor advances in control system design. Spec- tacular examples include self-driving cars, real-time computer translation between languages, and the reshaping ofmodern financialmarkets. At a simpler level, we may soon seemanyof the control systems inbasic dailydevices drivenbyembed- dedneuralnetworks insteadof the traditionalkindsofcontrollers. The rise of neural networks also foreshadows a potential convergence between our understanding of human-designed engineering systems and naturally designed biological systems (Frank2017). In a human-designed system, an engineermaybuild a controller to improve the totalbenefits thatarisefromtradeoffsbetweencost,performance,androbustness. In biology,naturalselectiontendstobuildbiochemicalorphysicalsystemsthatimprove the tradeoffs between various dimensions of biological success. Those biological dimensions of success often can be expressed in terms of cost, performance, and robustness. The similarities anddifferencesbetweenhuman-designed systemsandnaturally designedsystemswillprovidemanyinsights in thecomingyears.Anunderstanding of thebasicconceptsofcontroldesignwillberequiredtofollowfutureprogressand tocontribute to thatprogress. OpenAccess This chapter is licensed under the terms of theCreativeCommonsAttribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation,distributionandreproduction inanymediumorformat,as longasyougiveappropriate credit to theoriginal author(s) and thesource,providea link to theCreativeCommons licenseand indicate if changesweremade. The images or other third partymaterial in this chapter are included in the chapter’sCreative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulationorexceeds thepermitteduse,youwillneed toobtainpermissiondirectly from thecopyrightholder.