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MechE here. Control Theory surprisingly is only mandatorily taught to MechE (at least in the US). It was also arguably the hardest class I took in my 3 semester of hell (junior year + first semester of senior year). Huge props to you if you can learn this on your own. A lot of the fundamental math (a ton of Laplace transforms) and block diagram analysis is hard to follow without some guidance.

Edit: Interesting, I went to a ABET accredited college and my EE counterparts did not take control systems. Where we were told that we had to take it because of our (MechE) ABET requirements.

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I think it must vary by institution. For a second data point. EE here from an ABET accredited US University. Controls & Discrete Controls was mandatory for EE. No other engineering major at the school, including MechE, had this requirement.

Nearly the same for me. Continuous controls was a requirement for graduating with my BSEE. I don't believe that it was required for the MEs.

ChemEs take control too — it’s called “process control”. Covers Laplace transforms, PIDs, stability analysis etc. (MPC, LQG, Kalman filters at the graduate level). ChemE controls tend to deal with large multivariate nonlinear or locally linear systems with slow dynamics while MechE controls deals with smaller systems with very fast dynamics.

Chemical plants and oil refineries operate using optimal control (MPC) that control lower level PI loops. There are layers and layers of controls.

The controls in oil refineries are so optimization driven that some of the leading edge optimization solvers actually come from ChemE research groups. Oil was the old tech industry and they poured a lot of money into optimization and control R&D.

US ABET BME here.

we for sure took mandatory signals and controls, and we basically regarded ourselves as EEs whose circuits tended to be squishy and alive.

A disgustingly useful class, and damn hard.

Not exactly true. I have an electrical engineering degree from the US and took Systems and Controls. So, this is definitely not only taught to ME's..

Was it mandatory though? I took a Control Theory class for my Electrical and Computer Engineering undergrad degree in the US. But it was a senior/graduate-level elective and not required to graduate.

Minor aside, the class was the best of all my electives. I picked it based on advice from a friend who said "choose your electives based on the professor, not the material." One of those bits of advice I wish I'd absorbed (I'm sure I'd been told) earlier in my school career.

Controls was indeed a mandatory EE undergrad class at my University (also ABET accredited).

Also is a hard requirement for chemical engineers.

Additionally I find some of controls theory to be relevant context for machine learning models, in particular backpropagation.

As fare as I can tell, it's a pretty mixed bag; a lot of engg departments feel if you are going to get serious about control you are going to have to do it in graduate studies anyway which is probably fair.

My EE program had a control theory course as a senior year elective but it was not mandatory.

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