Control systems in use
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Flip to reveal answersWhat decides how a control system is engineered?
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Question
What decides how a control system is engineered?
Answer
The **consequence of being wrong**. The loop is always the same — sense, decide, act, measure — but a pacemaker and a thermostat face very different costs of failure.
Question
Why do critical systems use redundant sensors?
Answer
A failed sensor reading **zero looks like a genuine zero**. Comparing several means a disagreeing reading is treated as a fault rather than obeyed.
Question
What is a fail-safe state?
Answer
What the system does when it **cannot determine the situation** — a train applies the brakes, because stopping is safe and continuing is not.
Question
Hard or soft real-time?
Answer
**Hard**: a missed deadline is a failure (braking, airbag). **Soft**: it degrades quality (a dropped video frame).
Question
What is automation bias?
Answer
People trusting a usually-correct system and **stopping checking it**, so the rare failure passes unchallenged.
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Topic 1.3 hub
Operating and control systems
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