Symbolic algebra and physical-model-based control

In order to achieve the best possible control of a particular system, it is clear that as much information about the system as possible should be used when designing the controller. This leads to a controller specifically tailored to the system being controlled. Unfortunately, this is expensive in terms of design time and expertise, and a number of approaches have been suggested to overcome this problem. The approach taken by physical-model-based control is to model the system in a generic manner and then automatically design the controller based on this model. This process requires symbolic algebra to enable the controller to be designed.