Free 39-Episode Control Bootcamp: The Control Theory That Runs Real Robots

lukas_m_ziegler · x · 2026-09-04

A recommendation for Steve Brunton's (@eigensteve) Control Bootcamp: 39 free YouTube videos from a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Washington, covering the control theory that actually runs on real robots.

It starts from classical control (transfer functions, Bode plots, PID), then moves up into state space and optimal control: controllability and observability (whether you can steer the system and infer its state), LQR (the workhorse controller balancing tracking error against control effort), and the Kalman filter (how a robot estimates where it is when every sensor is noisy). Worked Matlab examples keep the math attached to runnable code.

Brunton is upfront that it's a rapid overview rather than an exhaustive treatment — the right expectation, and enough for most people getting into robot control.

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