Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to feed back into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems:Simple causal reasoning about a feedback system is difficult because the first system influences the second and second system influences the first, leading to a circular argument. This makes reasoning based upon cause and effect tricky, and it is necessary to analyze the system as a whole. As provided by Webster, feedback in business is the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source.
Feedback can give rise to incredibly complex behaviors. The Mandelbrot set (black) within a continuously colored environment is plotted by repeatedly feeding back values through a simple equation and recording the points on the imaginary plane that fail to diverge.
Control theory is a field of control engineering and applied mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a desired state, while minimizing any delay, overshoot, or steady-state error and ensuring a level of control stability; often with the aim to achieve a degree of optimality.
Centrifugal governor in a Boulton & Watt engine of 1788
An electromechanical timer, normally used for open-loop control based purely on a timing sequence, with no feedback from the process
Example of a single industrial control loop; showing continuously modulated control of process flow.
