Comment by dragontamer

From the electronics side, the path towards control theory is a lot of math (signals and systems, Fourier transforms, transfer functions, feedback and oscillations, compensation circuits) ultimately leading up to the student solving the inverted pendulum problem sometimes in early Masters degree region or maybe the advanced student Bachelor's degree.

I'm not entirely sure how to make that more 'accessible'. It's like, spend the next 5 years of your life mastering difficult math and electronics so that the sensors can be integrated into feedback that stabilizes a motor system.

I guess you can cheat and use servos for a lot of this (where an EE already solved many feedback loop issues). But if you ever need to build your own sensor+motor solution you'd get stuck if you didn't know the math.

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Making simple controls without relying upon feedback sensors is likely the goal, you can do a lot with that. But then do your best to avoid the Masters level demons that plague this problem set.

Maybe learn PID controller theory and if that isn't enough for your problems, give up and try a different design. PID is simple enough that you won't need years of math to learn, but it's very adhoc to configure and not always the best methodology to use.

Better than nothing though.