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In control theory, an open-loop controller, also called a non-feedback controller, is a control loop part of a control system in which the control action ("input" to the system [1]) is independent of the "process output", which is the process variable that is being controlled. [2]
A control loop is the fundamental building block of control systems in general and industrial control systems in particular. It consists of the process sensor, the controller function, and the final control element (FCE) which controls the process necessary to automatically adjust the value of a measured process variable (PV) to equal the value of a desired set-point (SP).
Control systems that include some sensing of the results they are trying to achieve are making use of feedback and can adapt to varying circumstances to some extent. Open-loop control systems do not make use of feedback, and run only in pre-arranged ways. Closed-loop controllers have the following advantages over open-loop controllers:
Although feedback is an important aspect of control engineering, control engineers may also work on the control of systems without feedback. This is known as open loop control. A classic example of open loop control is a washing machine that runs through a pre-determined cycle without the use of sensors.
In systems theory, an open system is a feed forward system that does not have any feedback loop to control its output. In contrast, a closed system uses on a feedback loop to control the operation of the system. In an open system, the output of the system is not fed back into the input to the system for control or operation. [citation needed]
The control system performance can be improved by combining the feedback (or closed-loop) control of a PID controller with feed-forward (or open-loop) control. Knowledge about the system (such as the desired acceleration and inertia) can be fed forward and combined with the PID output to improve the overall system performance.
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In some systems, closed-loop and open-loop control are used simultaneously. In such systems, the open-loop control is termed feedforward and serves to further improve reference tracking performance. A common closed-loop controller architecture is the PID controller .