What is a control engineering and why I chose control engineering as my research topic

Regardless of one's major is mechanical engineering or systems control engineering, control engineering is a just one topic to study at undergrad. However, as a research topic, there is a distinct difference between other topics of research. What is it? That is interdisciplinary.

Think about a situation such that a research topic of a undergrad student is composite material. That student would study basics of composite material and then, involve into research of composite material. In that research, there would be modelling, numerical simulation and comparison with experiment. But that's all.

What will be happened if it were control engineering? After modelling with physics, a student will start how to control based on a model obtained. Control engineering is a basically problem of mathematics. Also, in control engineering, there is sensor and actuator. Without knowing technique of programming or implementation of analogue electrical circuit, one cannot apply control to a real system such as robot.

In that sense, control engineering is interdisciplinary and a student can involve in all topics he/she prefer. Typically, those are physics, mathematics and part of programming.

Before I went to University of Tsukuba, I took examination of entrance to that university. In interview, I asked by a professor. That person asks: "Which research topic do you want to do?". I answered: "All". That professor answered "Which is not possible. I think it is better to choose one topic to research".

I chose to research CFRP as my undergraduate research project at 4th year of Univ of Tsukuba. I found that there is a problem in modelling. There is always modelling error compared with experiment result even if modelling gets complex. That is obvious by the result of experiment and numerical simulation of master's student. So, how to control with modelling error? Also, I found that I want to involve in every topic I know but it cannot be if it were CFRP research team. I thought to go to applied mathematics since it utilize both physics and mathematics. However, a professor suggested me that control engineering is a key driver for you. Since you can unite everything.

I chose control engineering topic for my postgraduate research topic. Nonlinear control or robust control? I chose robust control because I found that there is always modelling error. It is interesting to investigate how to control on such a situation.

The question however is, in industry or a company, a control engineer unite all? I think it is partially yes. But there is another answer. It will be described in later sections.