Quo Vadis Model Predictive Control? From Stabilizing to Distributed Economic MPC

Abstract

During the past decades model predictive control (MPC) has become a preferred control strategy for the control of a large number of industrial processes. Computational issues, application aspects and systems theoretic properties of MPC (like stability and robustness) are rather well understood by now. For many application disciplines a significant shift in the typical control tasks to be solved can, however, be witnessed at present. This concerns for example robot control, autonomous mobility, or industrial production processes. This will be examplarily discussed with the vision of the smart factory of the future, often termed Industry 4.0, where the involved control tasks, are undergoing a fundamental new orientation. In particular the stabilization of predetermined setpoints does not play the same role as it has in the past. In this talk we will first give an introduction to and an overview over the field of model predictive control. Then new challenges and opportunities for the field of control are discussed with Industry 4.0 as an example. We will in particular investigate the potential impact of Model Predictive Control for the fourth industrial revolution and will argue that some new developments in MPC, especially connected to distributed and economic model predictive control, appear to be ideally suited for addressing some of the new challenges.