Any control engineers out there?

[leright]

This is a field that is immensely interesting to me. Right now I am a dual major in EE and physics and I am taking a control systems course right now, with lab. I like it so much that I might want to go into this field as a profession, and I am contemplating taking a few more control classes, including process control, digital control, modern control, state space control analysis, a computational control modeling class, and possibly a analytical and adaptive control class. There are some extra classes there that don't fit into my curriculum as electives and they might increase my course load a bit, but that doesn't bother me much.

So, anyone out there a control engineer? What industry do you work in? What areas of control should I specialize that are interesting and applicable to industrial interests? I am in the heart of the automotive industry (metro detroit area) and control engineering is a sought after skill, it seems.

 

[Maxwell]

I'm not a control engineer, but I will say that modern control theory was the best class I have ever taken so far at university. The material was incredibly elegant. Classical controls was nice, but modern control and digital control was so much cooler. I have not taken classes in process or adaptive controls yet, unfortunately, but I would definitely like to.

 

[Atrus]

Go for it!

I'm a control engineer, although a fresh one (recently graduated). Well, I don't know what specific area would I recommend for you. However, I can just state that the rest of control engineering is fun as well as that first class you took. You'd be working on a meeting point of electrical engineering and mathematics for sure. Most probably there would be mechanical engineering to spice everything up, e.g. flight control, robotics, maybe chemistry if you go into process control, etc.

Since control engineering is needed in almost every aspect of human life and since control engineers are usually those that interact with other professions involved in a project, you may find yourself learning a lot about other fields on the way as well as about control engineering itself.

And there is always the coolness factor for getting to play with robots

 

[leright]

I'm a control engineer, although a fresh one (recently graduated). Well, I don't know what specific area would I recommend for you. However, I can just state that the rest of control engineering is fun as well as that first class you took. You'd be working on a meeting point of electrical engineering and mathematics for sure. Most probably there would be mechanical engineering to spice everything up, e.g. flight control, robotics, maybe chemistry if you go into process control, etc.

Since control engineering is needed in almost every aspect of human life and since control engineers are usually those that interact with other professions involved in a project, you may find yourself learning a lot about other fields on the way as well as about control engineering itself.

And there is always the coolness factor for getting to play with robots

hmmm...process control sounds interesting. I will have a minor in chemistry. That would be great to interface EE, math, physics, and chemistry concepts to solve engineering problems.