I put a revised version of my spreadsheet model of virtual control up at mu Dropbox site. The only change is that this spreadsheet lets you specify the location of the systems involved in the conflict. You enter their locations in the yellow cells labeled “CS1 Location” and “CS2 Location”. The locations are specified by numbers on the real number line.
The graph of the results of a Run of the model now shows the locations of the control systems (in solid red and blue lines) as well as the locations of the references of both systens for the state of the controlled varable (in dashed red and blue lines). The references still bound the Dead Zone of the conflict and the graph shows variations in the sinusoidally disturbed “virtual” controlled variable relative to that zone.
When you open the spreadsheet you will see that the references for CS1 and CS2 are on opposite sides of each other. If this were a tug of war CS1 would be trying to push the controlled variable into CS2’s territory and CS2 would be trying to push it into CS2’s territory. Of course, this couldn;t be done if CS1 and CS2 were connected to the controlled variable by rope. But it could be done if CS1 and CS2 were connected to the controlled variable by rigid poles. The spreadsheet shows that, in this case, there would still be a conflict with a Dead Zone.
The difference between a “tug of war” type conflict using rope versus one using rigid poles is a difference in the nature of the feedback connection from system outputs to the controlled variable. Since Kent’s model handles conflicts with both of these types of feedback functions, I’m wondering if he has used it to explain any real world examples of virtual control with non rigid feedback functions.