0.5 What’s Next
Module 0 was a playground: open-loop force schedules on a pizza run, then gas, time, and comfort as competing costs. The rest of the book keeps that habit — one idea, one explorable model — and widens the toolkit.
Section 1 — Intuition of dynamic systems and feedback
Why open-loop plans miss when the world pushes back — start with 1.1. Closed-loop sensing, then simple models from first principles, and the first look at the Laplace / transfer-function language that lets you talk about poles instead of only time traces.
Section 2 — Classical control
Single-input, single-output design in the frequency domain: PID you can tune by hand, root locus as gain moves the poles, Bode and Nyquist plots, and the margins that say how close you are to trouble.
Section 3 — Modern control
State-space: the system as a vector that evolves. Controllability and observability, placing poles with full-state feedback, and estimating the state when you cannot measure everything cleanly.
Section 4 — Optimal, nonlinear, and digital
Costs become matrices ( vs in Section 4.1, LQR). Hard limits and a rolling horizon show up in Section 4.2 (MPC) — including plans that can insist on without the Module 0 fudge. Then nonlinear dynamics and what changes when the controller runs on a digital clock.