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In cyber-physical systems, safety and availability are of utmost importance. To satisfy requirements on safety and availability, suitable supervisory controllers need to be employed. Supervisory control theory provides a foundation on which a model-based engineering method has been developed, providing guarantees on the correctness of resulting supervisory controllers with respect to the defined requirements. In this lecture, an overview will be given of the recent research projects at Eindhoven University of Technology aiming at the development of extensions to this method, and of supporting tools, giving rise to an integrated approach to the design of supervisory controllers for complex real-life systems. This includes a mathematically underpinned, straightforward and error-free path to implementation of the designed controllers. The research projects are related to the partnership with Rijkswaterstaat which is a part of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.
Logistics and transportation systems are man-made systems that are well suited for modeling in a discrete event system framework and particularly by Petri Nets (PNs), due to their different characteristics: distributed, parallel, deterministic, stochastic, discrete, and continuous. The paper presents a survey on the various Petri nets modeling frameworks proposed in the related literature for logistics and transportation systems, with applications to modeling, simulation, analysis, optimization and control. In particular, we focus on papers dealing with freight transportation and outline and classify the related works conducted using PNs as regards the proposed framework and addressed problems. We also debate the approach's viability, discussing contributions and limitations, and identify future research potentials.
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is an emerging aviation sector and is playing an integral part in the on-demand mobility revolution. UAM is powered by the convergence of advances in distributed electrical propulsion (DEP) and vehicle autonomy. The complexity of operations in the urban environment and the unconventional vehicle configurations designed to take advantage of new propulsion technologies, result in numerous challenges that benefit from a control-centric approach. In this talk, we outline some of these challenges and present our current approach to addressing them. For example, in order to achieve full market potential and access to UAM, vehicle autonomous flight is required. A key barrier to autonomous flight in a large multi-agent system is dealing with off-nominal situations and contingencies in a safe and predictable manner. We present our approach to intelligent contingency management and share recent results and open problems. Additionally, we discuss another major barrier to ubiquitous UAM – the noise signature produced by vehicles with multiple rotors. We present our approach to minimizing such noise within the framework of the acoustically-aware vehicle.
In this talk, we will discuss how optimization and control theory play a fundamental, and often overlooked, role in multi-UAV coordination. We will see how the solutions of optimal control problems are essential in combinatorial assignment algorithms. Using intuition gained by solving these problems, one can intuit how results dealing with static task assignments extend to cases where the tasks are dynamic in nature. The concepts discussed in this talk will be highlighted with specific problems that are relevant to defense applications.
Genetic circuits control every aspect of life and thus the ability to engineer them de-novo opens exciting possibilities, from revolutionary drugs and green energy to bugs that recognize and kill cancer cells. The robustness of natural gene networks is the result of a million years of evolution and is in contrast with the fragility of today’s engineered circuits. A genetic module’s input/output behavior changes in unpredictable ways upon inclusion into a larger system. Therefore, each component of a system is usually redesigned every time a new piece is added. Rather than relying on such ad-hoc design procedures, control theoretic approaches may be used to engineer “insulation” of circuit components from context, thus enabling modular composition through specified input/output connections. In this talk, I will give an overview of modularity failures in genetic circuits, focusing on problems of loads, and introduce a control-theoretic framework, founded on the concept of retroactivity, to address the insulation question. Within this framework, insulation can be mathematically formulated as a disturbance rejection problem; however, classical solutions are not directly applicable due to biophysical constraints. I will thus introduce solutions relying on time-scale separation, a key feature of biomolecular systems, which were used to build two devices: the load driver and the resource decoupler. These devices aid modularity, facilitate predictable composition of genetic circuits and show that control-theoretic approaches may be suitable to address pressing challenges in engineering biology.
Hiring and Supporting a Diverse Faculty (Dr. Bonnie Ferri)
This talk will explore some of the issues, challenges, and opportunities for hiring and supporting a diverse faculty in STEM disciplines. What are some policies, practices, and programs that support a healthy and productive culture among a diverse population? Do our promotion and advancement practices need retuning? What contributions can a professional society have to support success? Finally, what can each of us do individually to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in the faculty ranks?