IFAC Technical Committee Research Articles

Systems and Control for Societal Impact: IFAC TC 9.2 Visions and UN SDGs

The digital revolution has opened numerous new possibilities for control systems solutions with potential for widespread societal impacts. Thus, it is important to explore how the design of control systems can be performed in such a manner that these impacts can be steered towards contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The IFAC Technical Committee 9.2, Systems and Control for Societal Impact, is deeply interested in maximizing the benefits of automation, control and intelligent systems for society while avoiding their possible negative effects by anticipating potential adverse effects. The TC 9.2 is building its vision and activities along the emerging new field of cyber-physical-human systems (CPHS). This field is growing due to the proliferation of interactions between humans and (embedded, networked, interconnected) cyber-physical systems (CPS). The interplay between humans and CPS leads to new societal impacts and requires new tools for directing and guiding these impacts. Moreover, such interactions in CPHS require interdisciplinary collaborations between engineers and social and behavioral scientists and humanists for achieving the responsible development of CPHS.In this paper, we recap the TC9.2 topics and visions. We discuss the responsible development of CPHS which is the driving goal of the TC9.2 committee. We initiate an analysis to relate TC 9.2 topics with UN SDGs, through the idea of “six transformations”. The importance of stages of research development driven by SDG goals as well as the importance of individuals, corporations, and governments in this responsible design of systems is also highlighted. The close relation of the TC 9.2 visions with Digital Revolution for Sustainable Development through CPHS is discussed in detail. Relations with other transformations are also studied.

Control and Automation Education and UN SDGs: Alignment of TC 9.4 - Current Status and Future Directions

This paper describes and reviews the activities of the IFAC Technical Committee on Control Education and their relationship with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). In particular, Goal 4 – Quality Education – is addressed, and we discuss how the TC activities ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) of the United Nations focuses on accessible, inclusive, and high-quality education. By promoting lifelong learning opportunities, gender equality, skills enhancement for employment, and sustainable development education, TC9.4 initiatives set out in this paper address key targets of SDG4. The paper outlines various resources and strategies, including online control resources, interactive tools, virtual laboratories, and benchmark problems, aimed at enhancing control education globally. Emphasizing the importance of shared resources in reducing education costs and promoting inclusivity, the report underscores the role of education in societal advancement and the significance of control systems in addressing contemporary challenges for sustainable development.

Kids in Control: Educational Activity and Devices for International School Students

Kids in Control is a control-centered workshop that has been conceived for promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) skills and inclusion for kids from 8 to 10 years old. It includes activities and devices developed to improve the learning process, while fostering the creation of a new teaching and learning style, based on the most advanced digital technologies. It also aims at being firmly rooted in the foundations of pedagogy and in the interaction between teacher and learner. In this paper, we present the developments of such a project - sponsored by the IFAC Activity Fund action and supported by the IFAC Technical Committee 9.2. Systems and Control for Societal Impact (Chair: Mariana Netto, Univ. Gustave Eiffel) - with reference to its version specifically dedicated to International Schools.

Control Education: TC 9.4 Developments and Vision

The covid-19 pandemic has forced all the teachers to rethink control education by exploiting modern technologies. Further, the always increasing availability of computational tools and of resources in the web is a great opportunity for both instructors and students as it facilitates the sharing of best practices and, ultimately, the implementation of personalized learning approaches. Thus, this is really an important time to discuss the future developments of control education. In this paper we outline the different initiatives and discussions of the IFAC Technical Committee 9.4 on Control Education, who has elaborated many ideas in this context. They are related to different concepts involved in the whole control education framework and it is therefore believed that they will be very useful to improve the teaching activities of the IFAC members.

Guest Editorial: Learning, optimisation and control of cyber‐physical systems

Guest Editorial: Learning, optimisation and control of cyber‐physical systems

Methodology of Teaching the First Control Course

System view, understanding systems and how they are controlled is an important discipline in engineering education. Nowadays considering the ever increasing knowledge, the explosion of information available at the internet, the available visual technics and software tools there is a need to revisit the content and the teaching methodology of the first control course. The IFAC Technical Committee on Control Education (9.4) is circulating a pilot survey addressing these questions. Here we present our experience related to renewing the control course. The topics of the course are given. The main ideas are explained on two levels: hopefully in an understandable way for everyone, and precisely, using mathematical tools. In the lectures some parts of the multilevel e-book, Sysbook are referred, which has been elaborated to present the main principles governing systems and control on different levels. Besides static teaching materials interactive demonstrations developed for Sysbook are also used in the lectures which enhance the effectiveness and also enjoyment of the learning process. At the last part of each lecture the students are active solving problems related to the topic of the lecture. They are motivated by the obtained extra evaluation points. Then the solutions of the problems are discussed. Computer laboratory exercises using MATLAB/SIMULINK software contribute to understanding and applying the analysis and synthesis methods discussed in the lectures. The course is supported by the recently published Springer books: Keviczky et al.: Control Engineering and Control Engineering: MATLAB Exercises. In the content of the control course a new feature is the emphasis of the YOULA parameterization method for controller design already in the first control course and showing that other controller design methods can be considered as its special cases. Nowadays in education a new teaching – learning paradigm is Open Content Development (OCD) which means active participation of the teachers and students creating an up-to-date teaching material. This project runs at the Department of Technical Education at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics since 2015 supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the frame of vocational teacher training programs several so-called micro-contents have been developed. Utilizing the experiences of these pilot efforts the Sysbook platform has been connected to the OCD model. In a special surface Sysbook provides several case studies for systems and their control (e.g. driving, energy production and distribution, oil refinery, systems and control in the living organism, etc.). Teachers and students studying systems and control can elaborate new case studies in their areas of interest which means active application of the learned topics. After evaluation these projects can be uploaded in the student area of Sysbook. Summarizing: in the methodology of teaching a basic control course the motivation of the students can be increased by active participation in the learning process, including interactive demonstration of the principles, solving exercises at the end of the lectures and getting immediate feedback, solving analysis and synthesis problems in the computer laboratories, and developing their own case studies for Sysbook. It should be also emphasized that the examples of systems and their control should be chosen mainly from the area of the specialization of the students (electrical or software engineering, chemical engineering, biology, economics, etc.). Also it is important to provide real-time experiments in laboratory work or using distant laboratories. IFAC Repository would be also of great help reaching useful resources.

A First Course in Feedback, Dynamics and Control: Findings from 2019 Online Survey of the International Control Community

This paper summarizes the results from a large-scale survey on the content and teaching philosophy of the first, and in many cases the only, control course taken by undergraduate students in engineering and applied sciences around the world. The IFAC Technical Committee on Education developed and administered the survey in 2019. At the time of writing, 201 control professionals have responded to the survey. The majority view is that the first course in control should focus on concepts and avoid excessive mathematical proofs. The responders ranked the depth of coverage of 63 topics commonly found in introductory control texts. Based on the ranking results, a sample curriculum for a first control course is outlined.

Plain Talk on Stochastic Adaptive Control and Its Broader Impact Some Reflections from the IFAC Technical Board Liaison to Education.

Abstract This paper focuses on innovative methods of teaching stochastic adaptive control with students who represent all science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The Stochastic Adaptive Control course has been developed based on the author’s research area and it demonstrates the power, beauty and excitement of stochastic adaptive control as a field that spans STEM. Teaching is shown as a stochastic process that changes in time. The course has been taught at the mathematics department for the last 20 years by the team of mathematics and engineering faculty. The course is very popular, attracts junior and senior undergraduate and graduate students, and leads towards honors theses for undergraduates, and masters and doctoral theses for graduate students. Best practices leading to the success are presented. This paper provides also a sample of plain talk on stochastic adaptive control and broader impact best practices of control. The formation of IFAC Technical Committee (TC) Liaisons to Education was based on the concept of integrating research and education at all levels.

FROM SWISS TO TECIS AND BEYOND

The IFAC TC 9.5 “Supplemental Ways for Improving International Stability – SWIIS” was one of the longest IFAC communities dating back to the 1981 World Congress in Kyoto. In 1983 Austria hosted the first IFAC SWIIS Workshop attracting a unique range of inter-disciplinary contributions. SWIIS expanded into an IFAC Technical Committee (TC 9.5) as a bridge between control scientists and automation engineers and various other disciplines with the common theme of improving human living conditions and explore contributions to a stable and sustainable planet. Whilst the “heartbeat” of TC 9.5 has remained, the scope has expanded as the TC grew and developed, and the world changed to the present status and perspective.This contribution starts with a short history of SWIIS and because of the changing scope the transformation to TECIS in 2011. This was necessary for including new actual topics. Finally an outlook in the future, emphasising new topics, will be given in this paper.

Use of IoT Technology to Drive the Automotive Industry from Connected to Full Autonomous Vehicles

The automotive industry has been around for quite some time and it has evolved ever since, but the major transformation that is happening now from vehicles driven by humans to vehicles driven by themselves will have a long term impact on society. Today's cars are already connected and have been connected for some time, since they can link to smartphones, offer emergency roadside assistance, register real-time traffic alerts etc., but this evolution is about to change. The automobile industry is on the brink of a revolution, to move to self-driving automobile industry, and the driving force behind this is the fast developing technology, the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT will transform the automobile industry and at the same time, the automobile industry will provide a big boost to IoT. The potential and the prospects of this technology is astonishing. This paper examines the market and technical trends towards Autonomous Vehicles, evolution stages from early cars to fully autonomous, the importance of IoT in driving this industry ecosystem, advantages and disadvantages of Autonomous Vehincles, key issues and challenges faced by the industry, standards activities around this industry and finally the deployment use cases. The focus of this paper is more based on an industrial push to identify issues and challenges of Autonomous Vehicles and less on any academic research activity. The intention of this paper is to bring these issues and challenges to the attention of IFAC technical committee and trigger some debate on the opportunities for IFAC research in international stability.

New perspectives for the future interoperable enterprise systems

The rapid changes in today's socio-economic and technological environment in which the enterprises operate necessitate the identification of new requirements that address both theoretical and practical aspects of the Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). Such an evolving environment contributes to both the process and the system complexity which cannot be handled by the traditional architectures. The constant pressure of requirements for more data, more collaboration and more flexibility motivates us to discuss about the concept of Next Generation EIS (NG EIS) which is federated, omnipresent, model-driven, open, reconfigurable and aware. All these properties imply that the future enterprise system is inherently interoperable. This position paper presents the discussion that spans several research challenges of future interoperable enterprise systems, specialized from the existing general research priorities and directions of IFAC Technical Committee 5.3,11IFAC Technical Committee 5.3 « Enterprise Integration and Networking », http://www.ifac-tc53.org namely: context-aware systems, semantic interoperability, cyber-physical systems, cloud-based systems and interoperability assessment.

Barriers to ethical behaviour and stability: Stereotyping and scapegoating as pretexts for avoiding responsibility

The paper considers the relationship between stereotyping, scapegoating, unethical behaviour and instability and shows how stereotyping and scapegoating can contribute to national and international instability. It presents a revised version of a three-part model of conflict previously developed by the author, with the components of an issue of dispute, a context which favours violence over peaceful resolution, and a trigger event, and shows how some of the theories of scapegoating and the resulting violence fit into this model. It also presents a new three-level model of the factors which lead to stereotyping at the individual, organisational or communal, and wider society levels.The paper also discusses potential solutions to current vicious cycles in which unethical behaviour, stereotyping and scapegoating promote or lead to instability. The role of multi-loop action learning and organisations such as TECIS (IFAC Technical Committee 9.5 on Technology, Culture and International Stability, formerly SWIIS) are highlighted in providing support for whistleblowing, responsibility and accountability at both the collective and individual levels, a strengthening of both individual and group identities and increasing respect for currently stereotyped and discriminated against out-groups, which will reduce their vulnerability to scapegoating.

Towards a New Agenda for Systems Engineering and International Stability

In this paper we report the proceedings of the final panel session at the international stability and systems engineering international IFAC conference held in Ireland in June 2012. This session brought together contributions from philosophy, critical studies and cybernetics to explore new avenues of research and practice for the IFAC technical committee for international stability (TC 9/5). The session arose from a special proposed session by Nicolae Bulz, member of TC 9/5 which emphasised a more multi-disciplinary approach to international stability issues for technologists, engineers and scientists. The following paper sets out the main contributions to the panel which was co-chaired by Larry Stapleton, TC 9/5 chairperson.

Trends in marine control systems

Sperry and Minorski are names synonymous with the development of the first steering autopilots and it is well known that their pioneering work and seminal publications led to the introduction of the three-term or proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller for automatic ship steering. Despite the efforts and enthusiasm of numerous researchers, from all areas of control engineering, to persuade industry to adopt more sophisticated controller designs, PID controllers remain the industry preference and industry standard for automatic control systems. The paper sets the scene with a review of the early developments of automatic control systems for ship steering, which led to Sperry's automatic pilot. This is followed by an overview of developments in roll stabilization; integrated ship steering and roll stabilization; unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vessels. Consideration of over 750 papers presented at the 13 conferences and workshops sponsored by the IFAC Technical Committee on Marine Systems in the period 1992–2008 is used to track recent trends in marine control systems and are the basis for some thoughts on possible future directions for the marine control community.

TRENDS IN MARINE CONTROL SYSTEMS

Sperry and Minorski are names synonymous with the development of the first steering autopilots and it is well known that their pioneering work and seminal publications led to the introduction of the three-term or proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller for automatic ship steering. Despite the efforts and enthusiasm of numerous researchers, from all areas of control engineering, to persuade industry to adopt more sophisticated controller designs, PID controllers remain the industry preference and industry standard for automatic control systems. The paper sets the scene with a review of the early developments of automatic control systems for ship steering, which led to Sperry's automatic pilot. This is followed by an overview of developments in roll stabilisation; integrated ship steering and roll stabilisation; unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vessels. Consideration of over 700 papers presented the twelve conferences and workshops sponsored by the IFAC Technical Committee on Marine Systems in the period 1992 to 2007 is used to track recent trends in marine control systems and as the basis for some thoughts on possible future directions for the marine control community.

Controller Design via Nonsmooth Multidirectional Search

We propose an algorithm which combines multidirectional search (MDS) with nonsmooth optimization techniques to solve difficult problems in automatic control. Applications include static and fixed-order output feedback controller design, simultaneous stabilization, $H_2/H_\infty$-synthesis, and much else. We show how to combine direct search techniques with nonsmooth descent steps in order to obtain convergence certificates in the presence of nonsmoothness. Our technique is efficient when small and medium size controllers for plants with large state dimension are sought. Our numerical testing includes several benchmark examples. For instance, our algorithm needs 0.41\,s to compute a static output feedback stabilizing controller for the Boeing 767 flutter benchmark problem [E. E. J. Davison, IFAC Technical Committee Reports, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1990], a system with 55 states. The first static controller without performance specifications for this system was obtained in [J. Burke, A. Lewis, and M. Overton, SIAM J. Optim., 15 (2003), pp. 751-779].

Current Status and Future Trends in the Automation of Mineral and Metal Processing

A review of the current status and future trends in the automation and control of mineral and metal processing is presented in this paper. The presentation is based partly on a larger study by the IFAC Technical Committee on Mining, Mineral and Metal Processing (MMM), which prepared a contemplative stance on the MMM industry. The purpose of the study is to present a brief overview of the control techniques or methods used in this industry, to give typical applications of such techniques, and to discuss supportive technologies that form a critical part of the implementation of such techniques. It also aims to identify techniques, applications and supportive technologies that are actively used or which are emerging as potential winners in the future. Evaluation of publications on IFAC MMM events during the last 20 years also shows some trends in the application of a number of process control methods in the MM industry. One aim of this paper is to review the success of the translation of theoretically based developments into practice.

World Stability - An IFAC Technologies Based Contribution

Recognizing the problems of war and of maintaining peace that exist in society, the IFAC Technical Committee on Supplementary Ways for Increasing International Stability (SWIIS) has been established since 1982. Regular workshops have been held and more than one hundred papers presented. Automatic control technologies related to international stability are reviewed. Similarities to the IFAC Technical Committee structure and the interests of IF AC affiliates are noted. A recommendation to inform IF AC Technical Committees, and IFAC people, of areas where their capabilities might contribute and to encourage research enabling the maximum contribution from all concerned is made.

Trends in the Application of Model Based Fault Detection and Diagnosis of Technical Processes

After a short view on the historical development of model-based fault detection some proposals for the terminology in the field of supervision, fault detection and diagnosis are stated based on the work within the IFAC Technical Committee SAFEPROCESS. Some basic fault detection and diagnosis methods are briefly considered. Then, an evaluation of publications during the last 5 years shows some trends in the application of model-based fault detection and diagnosis methods.

Umberto Agnelli

The European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) was established in 1978 as a non-governmental international organization for development and improvement of engineering education.In 1986/87 SEFI initiated in close co-operation with the Commission of the European Community, and the Standing Conference of Rectors (CRE) the European Programme for Advanced Continuing Education (PACE).The PACE programme is based on experiences from the Association of Media-Based Continuing Education for Engineers (AMCEE) and the National Technological University (NTU) in the USA. The organization and preliminary course program of PACE is described. The PACE programme is supported by the Commission of the European Communities under the COMETT programme, which is one out of a more than ten EEC programmes for development of technology.Supplementary to these activities is described the NATO Science Programme within which Advanced Study Institutes and Advanced Research Workshops are organized.lt is recommended that the field of Automatic Control is included as a High-Tech field within the PACE programme and that the IFAC Technical Committee on Education is made responsible for the corresponding Programme Advisory Group.