Page 12 - Classification Parameter Estimation & State Estimation An Engg Approach Using MATLAB

1

Introduction

Engineering disciplines are those fields of research and development that
attempt to create products and systems operating in, and dealing with,
the real world. The number of disciplines is large, as is the range of scales
that they typically operate in: from the very small scale of nanotechnol-
ogy up to very large scales that span whole regions, e.g. water manage-
ment systems, electric power distribution systems, or even global systems
(e.g. the global positioning system, GPS). The level of advancement in
the fields also varies wildly, from emerging techniques (again, nanotech-
nology) to trusted techniques that have been applied for centuries (archi-
tecture, hydraulic works). Nonetheless, the disciplines share one
important aspect: engineering aims at designing and manufacturing
systems that interface with the world around them.
Systems designed by engineers are often meant to influence their
environment: to manipulate it, to move it, to stabilize it, to please it,
and so on. To enable such actuation, these systems need information,
e.g. values of physical quantities describing their environments and
possibly also describing themselves. Two types of information sources
are available: prior knowledge and empirical knowledge. The latter is
knowledge obtained by sensorial observation. Prior knowledge is the
knowledge that was already there before a given observation became
available (this does not imply that prior knowledge is obtained without
any observation). The combination of prior knowledge and empirical
knowledge leads to posterior knowledge.

Classification, Parameter Estimation and State Estimation: An Engineering Approach using MATLAB
F. van der Heijden, R.P.W. Duin, D. de Ridder and D.M.J. Tax
Ó 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ISBN: 0-470-09013-8