Homework 1

24-677 Special Topics: Linear Control Systems

Prof. D. Zhao
August 29, 2018

Due: September 10, 2018, 4:30 pm. Submit BOTH in class and online.

• Your online version and its time stamp will be used for assessment. The paper version
will only be used for the backup purpose.

• We will use Gradescope ( https://www.gradescope.com/) to grade. The link is on the

panel of CANVAS. If you are confused about the tool. Ask on Piazza or email Bolun
Dai @bdai@andrew.cmu.edu if you are confused with the tool.

• The full score of this homework is 100 points. Each question accounts for 10 point.
The bonus question is 10 points. The points you get from bonus questions can be used
to compensate the points lost in this homework or other homework sets but not in Mid
terms or project.

Exercise 1. The impulse response of an ideal lowpass filter is given by

sin 2ω(t − t0 )
h(t) = 2ω
2ω(t − t0 )
for all t, where ω and t0 are constants. Is the ideal lowpass filter causal? Is it possible to
build the filter in the real world?

Exercise 2. Consider a system described by

ÿ + 2ẏ − 3y = u̇ − u

What are the transfer function and the impulse response of the system?

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Exercise 3. Let g(t, τ ) = g(t + α, τ + α) for all t, τ and α. Show that g(t, τ ) depends only
on t − τ .

Exercise 4. Consider a two-input and two-output system described by

D11 (p)y1 (t) + D12 (p)y2 (t) = N11 (p)u1 (t) + N12 (p)u2 (t)

D21 (p)y1 (t) + D22 (p)y2 (t) = N21 (p)u1 (t) + N22 (p)u2 (t)

where Nij and Dij are polynomials of p := d/dt. What is the transfer matrix of the system?

Exercise 5. Find state equations to describe the pendulum system in Fig 1 and Fig 2. The
system are useful to model one- or two-link robotic manipulators. If θ, θ1 and θ2 are very
small, can you consider the two systems as linear?

θ
l

u(t)
mg

Figure 1: One-link Robotic Manipulator Model

θ1
l1

m1
l2
θ2
m2
u(t)

Figure 2: Two-link Robotic Manipulator Model

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Exercise 6. Find a state equation to describe the network shown in Fig 3. Find also its
transfer function.

1F

-1Ω +

1Ω

u(current source) 1F y

1H
−

Figure 3: An electrical network

Exercise 7. Given x1 = [1, 1, 1]T , x2 = [1, −1, 1]T , x3 = [1, 0, 0]T . Express z = [6, 3, 1]T in
terms of the basis vectors.

Exercise 8. Do question 7 with Python. Attach the Python code.

Resources to learn Python:
1. A four-hour free introduction interactive learning tool:
https://campus.datacamp.com/courses/intro-to-python-for-data-science/chapter-4-numpy?ex=3
2. Official website: https://www.python.org/
It is a dictionary. Search the function that you need.
3. Python for linear algebra:
https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs231a/section/section1.pdf

Exercise 9. Determine the dimension of the vector space spanned by x1 = [1, 2, 2, 1]T ,
x2 = [1, 0, 0, 1]T , x3 = [3, 4, 4, 3]T .

Exercise 10. Do question 9 in Python. Attach the code.

Bonus question:
Prove why ∅ is unique in the vector space.