Outline of control engineering

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to control engineering:

Control engineering – engineering discipline that applies control theory to design systems with desired behaviors. The practice uses sensors to measure the output performance of the device being controlled and those measurements can be used to give feedback to the input actuators that can make corrections toward desired performance. When a device is designed to perform without the need of human inputs for correction it is called automatic control (such as cruise control for regulating a car's speed).

Branches

Adaptive control
Control theory – interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The usual objective of control theory is to calculate solutions for the proper corrective action from the controller that result in system stability.
Digital control
Energy-shaping control
Fuzzy control
Hybrid control
Intelligent control
Model predictive control
Multivariable control
Neural control
Nonlinear control
Optimal control
Real-time control
Robust control
Stochastic control