Plenary lectures

Each day of the conference will be kicked out by a plenary lecture delivered by distinguished researchers from the field of control theory and its real-life applications.

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Andrew Paice (head of R&D Controls, Schindler Elevator Company): Control & Optimization for Elevator Systems

Jean-Pierre Corriou (professor at ENSIC Nancy): Multivariable control of an industrial gas phase copolymerization reactor

Workshops

Mario Zanon (KU Leuven): Workshop on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Abstract: Many control applications need to deal with nonlinear, unstable and constrained processes. Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) can explicitly handle nonlinear dynamics while enforcing mixed state and input constraints by solving on line an optimal control problem (OCP). In the past, the computational burden of solving an OCP has limited the application of NMPC to slow processes. Recent algorithmic advances allow to reduce the computational times to a few milliseconds, making it possible to apply NMPC also to fast mechatronic systems. Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) is an observer that performs on line state estimation by formulating it as an optimization problem. The MHE and NMPC problems share a similar structure and can be solved by using the same algorithms.

The MPC scheme will be first introduced with the aid of a simple problem and sketch of the stability proof will be provided and the MHE scheme will be presented. The efficient numerical methods that allow the possibility for fast NMPC and MHE implementations will be detailed next and the workshop will be concluded with two challenging examples.