inControl ep34 - inControl guide to ... Controllability & Observability
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Jul 17, 2025 Explore the fascinating world of controllability and observability! Discover how these concepts revolutionized space navigation during the race to the moon. Dive into Kalman's insights on state-space methods and learn about practical tests for engineers. Uncover the applications in complex networks, from optimizing brain stimulation to the challenges of self-driving cars. Plus, hear how these ideas intersect with reinforcement learning in AI. Finally, did you catch the sneak peek into AI-generated voices as a unique observability test?
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Observability And Controllability Intuition
- Observability is like sweeping a flashlight in a dark room to infer hidden structure from partial measurements.
- Controllability is about whether actions can reach every corner of that room by rearranging or moving objects.
Space Race Sparked State-Space Shift
- The space race and NASA's needs catalyzed the shift to state-space methods in the 1960s.
- Kalman's work on state models and filters directly addressed navigation and limited onboard computing needs.
Kalman's Rank Tests Made Theory Practical
- Kalman provided algebraic rank tests for controllability and observability that engineers could check numerically.
- These tests turned abstract reachability questions into practical matrix computations.
