Tamer Başar, Sean P. Meyn, William R. Perkins (2020), arXiv preprint (course notes for ECE 515, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) — ARXIV-2007.01367
Key takeaways
- A first-year graduate course in state-space control. It covers linear (mostly continuous-time) system modelling, structural properties (stability, controllability, observability), feedback synthesis (pole placement, observers, tracking), and optimal control via dynamic programming and HJB, including the LQR solution, and the minimum principle.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-062. What follows is what the work says about itself.
These are the three authors’ lecture notes for UIUC’s graduate course ECE 515 (formerly ECE 415), which follows an undergraduate frequency-domain control course. They emphasise state-space techniques in four parts: modelling, analysis of structural properties, synthesis of observers, compensators and controllers against design specifications, and optimization. Linear systems are the focus, with nonlinear systems treated only for stability and dynamic optimisation. Continuous time gets more depth than discrete time. The goals are sound design principles for feedback loops that respect the information available about the state, and familiarity with computational tools.
Standing in the record
Filed from the survey of 2026-09-25 of work the anthology set aside as out of scope (tier C): 370 seconds of active reading over 1 session in the papers-feed tracker. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-062 is the close reading of 2026-09-25, and it placed the work: Active — a sound, free, compact state-space control course, worth reading as background for LQR, Lyapunov and HJB when a reader needs one place for them. It is not a source for anything current, and the preface’s promise of a reinforcement-learning bridge is not delivered in the text.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-062, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: low — It is a 238-page textbook read once (t=370, n=1). The skim identifies what is where. Deeper reading only makes sense chapter by chapter, when a specific note needs it.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-062 is that reading):
- It is background reference for control-theoretic views of optimisation and RL. Ch. 10 (HJB/LQR) is the part most often invoked in ML (linear-quadratic RL, continuous-time views of training dynamics).
- It is a textbook, not a claim. It would only be filed as a source if a practice or theory note needs a citable derivation (e.g. LQR or Lyapunov stability).
Access when seeded: arXiv abs page (v1 2 Jul 2020, v2 11 Jul 2024) and the full PDF of v2 (238 pp.). Read directly: title page, preface including the 2024 note, the PDF outline, and the openings of Ch. 1 and Ch. 10. The title page says “Originally prepared January 2007 (this version, July 2024)”, so the notes existed before arXiv. The year and date above are the first public posting I could verify, arXiv v1.