engineering

Karl Johan Åström

Karl Johan Åström is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Karl Johan Åström rather than just read about it. In short: Karl Johan Åström (born August 5, 1934) is a Swedish control theorist, who has made contributions to the fields of control theory and control engineering, computer control and adaptive control. In 1965, he described a general framework of Markov decision processes with incomplete information, what ultimately led to the notion of a Partially observable Markov decision process.

Key takeaways

Karl Johan Åström belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Karl Johan Åström to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Karl Johan Åström from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Karl Johan Åström (born August 5, 1934) is a Swedish control theorist, who has made contributions to the fields of control theory and control engineering, computer control and adaptive control. In 1965, he described a general framework of Markov decision processes with incomplete information, what ultimately led to the notion of a Partially observable Markov decision process. In 1995, Åström was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to identification, stochastic, and adaptive control and their incorporation in control engineering practice.

Biography Åström was born in Östersund, Sweden, and received his M.Sc. in Engineering Physics (1957) and PhD in Automatic Control and Mathematics (1960) from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where he also taught from 1955 to 1960 while working on inertial guidance for the Swedish National Defence Research Institute. In 1961 Åström joined the IBM Nordic Laboratory to work on computerized process control, with tours at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York (1962) and San Jose, California (1963). After his return he led efforts in the computer control of paper manufacturing machinery. In 1965, Åström was named chair of the newly founded Department of Automatic Control at Lund University, Sweden. From 1965 to 1999 he was chair of the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University, where he is now professor emeritus. Since 2002 he has been distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Åström is a Fellow of the IEEE, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, vice president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the ASME Rufus Oldenburger medal (1985) and the International Federation of Automatic Control Quazza Medal (1987). In 1987 he was also awarded the degree Docteur Honoris Causa from l'Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble. He received in 1989 the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, in 1990 the IEEE Control Systems Science and Engineering Award, and in 1993 the IEEE Medal of Honor for his "fundamental contributions to theory and applications of adaptive control technology".

Publications Books

1970. Introduction to Stochastic Control. Academic Press, 1970; Dover, 2006. 1989. Adaptive Control. With B Wittenmark. Addison-Wesley, 1989. 1996. Computer-controlled Systems, Theory and Design. With B Wittenmark. Prentice Hall, 1996; Dover, 2011. (IFAC Textbook award for first edition, 1993) 2005. Advanced PID Control. With T Hägglund. ISA, 2005. 2008. Feedback Systems: An Introduction for Scientists and Engineers. With R. Murray. Princeton University Press, 2008. (IFAC Textbook award, 2011) Papers

KJ Åström, B Wittenmark. "On self-tuning regulators," Automatica, vol. 9, pp. 185–199, 1973.

See also Partially observable Markov decision process

References

External links Karl Johan Åström faculty page IEEE History Center biography Åström and Murray: Feedback Systems (2008) [textbook]

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Karl Johan Åström

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Karl Johan Åström claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Karl Johan Åström before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Karl Johan Åström ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Karl Johan Åström

In research: Karl Johan Åström appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Karl Johan Åström in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Karl Johan Åström is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1934 births, Academic staff of Lund University, Academic staff of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Karl Johan Åström outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Karl Johan Åström in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Karl Johan Åström means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Karl Johan Åström out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Karl Johan Åström in simple terms?

Why does Karl Johan Åström matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Karl Johan Åström?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Karl Johan Åström.