Can anyone recommend a book on control?

Of course, the obvious answer is B:CP or "Making Sense of Behavior", but
for a student whose university library doesn't have these, can anyone
suggest a useful widely available book that conveys the basics of feedback
control, without too much mathematics? Or perhaps a tutorial on a web
page, if there is one. I looked over the CSG web site, but I don't think
there's anything there that would be useful for someone with no knowledge
of control theory at all. Something that begins with a nice big diagram of
the basic control loop, explained by reference to a domestic thermostat,
would be ideal. I searched on the web, but I haven't found anything
suitable.

This is for a student at another university who recently came across the
work I've been doing on synthetic animation of humanoids, using simple
control systems in the joints to generate realistic movements. She's a
masters student studying animation and came to visit me yesterday. I gave
her an outline of how I've been using control theory, and showed her my
copy of B:CP. She has a computing science background and understands what
a differential equation is, but that's the extent of her mathematical
knowledge.

-- Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/
   School of Information Systems, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.

[From Bruce Nevin 2001.07.19 13:30 EDT]

I wonder if we could get one of Bill's many introductory essays on line and posted on the website. The 1988 "Outline" in LCS I might be a candidate.

  Bruce Nevin

Hi Richard,

Would this be helpful?

Richardson, George P. (1991). Feedback thought in social science and
systems theory. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[chapter on Powers].

Hebb, Donald Olding (1972). A textbook of psychology, 3rd edition.
Philadelphia, PA: Saunders. Chapter: the control of behavior: cognitive
and noncognitive, pp. 78-95.

Wayne A. Hershberger (Ed.), Volitional Action: Conation and Control.
Amsterdam: North-Holland. In Series Advances in Psychology 62, G. E.
Stelmach & P. A. Vroon, Editors.

Cheers,

Bryan Thalhammer

[From Richard Kennaway (2001.07.19 19:49 BST)]

I just found Richard Marken's introduction at
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/SP.html, which looks like a good first
step in explaining the notion of control to someone new to the subject.
I've suggested to the student that she reads that and then looks for
introductory books in her library, and pick ones whose first chapter makes
sense in the light of that article.

-- Richard Kennaway, jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk, http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/
   School of Information Systems, Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.