Projects / Programmes
January 1, 2015
- December 31, 2021
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 2.06.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Systems and cybernetics |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| P170 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Computer science, numerical analysis, systems, control |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 2.02 |
Engineering and Technology |
Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering |
control systems engineering, control systems life cycle, advanced process control, nonlinear systems identification, condition monitoring, prognostics and health management, tokamak reactor, fuel cells, batteries, biological processes, smart factories, energy efficient buildings
Researchers (34)
Organisations (1)
| no. |
Code |
Research organisation |
City |
Registration number |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
0106 |
Jožef Stefan Institute |
Ljubljana |
5051606000 |
90,753 |
Abstract
The aim of this program is to build new knowledge and expertise needed for comprehensive treatment of the entire control systems engineering life cycle. By systematically conveying research results into the usable technologies the group will keep playing notable role in bridging the gap known as the “valley of death”. The proposed research program is aimed to support this vision through the synergy between methodological research, development of prototypes, tools and building blocks, and applied research in the areas recognized as priority in Slovenia and EU. Focus will be on novel methods and tools for raising the quality of control systems performance, life span, reliability and safety as well as design efficiency. The work will be organised across the closely inter-related clusters of three R&D tracks:
1. Methodologies for control systems design. It is split into three major tracks: (i) modelling of complex nonlinear dynamic systems with emphasis on evolving Gaussian process models for large streams of data records (big data problem), (ii) advanced nonlinear process control with emphasis on novel computationally efficient explicit model predictive control and (iii) a portfolio of model-based and signal-based techniques for system condition monitoring and prognostics of the remaining useful life.
2. Tools and building blocks for control systems engineering. It is aimed to meet the specific requirements encountered in control systems engineering in the emerging and priority areas. Emphasis will be on tools for control systems implementation where off-the-shelf standard solutions are either missing or inadequate.
3. Applied research in the priority areas. The rationale for this cluster is to address a subset of the challenging problems that are perceived to be of highest societal and economical relevance for Slovenia and EU at large. The topics of concern include: (i) development of versatile predictive control of tokamak reactor ITER, (ii) hierarchical control and condition monitoring (CM) of fuel cells to raise their marketability, (iii) diagnostics, prognostics and smart power management of Li-ion and emerging post-Li batteries, (iv) model-based advanced production control as a means towards the concept of smart factories, (v) coordinated control and performance optimisation across the entire chain of water supply, purification, sewage, recycling and exploitation of organic waste and sludge for biogas production, (vi) advanced control for energy efficient buildings.
The anticipated results are expected to contribute significantly to the reduction of the gap between control theory and practice and to have visible impact on the community welfare. Besides R&D quality as well as outreach and dissemination, stress will be on the development of new prototypes and demonstration case studies. This will be possible owing to a good cooperation over a network of about 40 partners on national and international scale.
Significance for science
Information and communication technologies, with control as the indispensable constituent, are recognized to be of highest priority in EU and worldwide. Major issues and visions related to control have been shaped in various professional associations and research granting programs, for instance Horizon 2020, SPIRE and FCH JU initiatives where topics deserving particular attention have been identified. Most of the issues raised in the underlying program are fully compliant with those perceived by the international community as highly relevant. The anticipated results are expected to have global impact and significant contribution in an overall effort to tine the gap between control theory and practice.
The most notable outcomes will be:
· New evolving GP models will substantially raise the potentials of traditional GP models to tackle with highly dimensional data and especially for online streaming data (contribution to “big data” problem).
· Methods for GP modelling will be expanded to offer even more functionality in applications like control-system design (e.g., for more efficient state-space modelling), forecasting (e.g., for tackling time-variant systems) and prognostics of asset.
· New formulations of eMPC will be based on decomposition of the global optimisation problem. Hence the multi-parametric approach will be applied only to the crucial part of the problem. Therefore, the parametric explosion, which currently restricts the applicability of eMPC to small-dimensional problems, will be circumvented. In the online computation, only simple analytical calculations will be needed. New perspectives will be open for control of multivariable systems of higher dimension and fast dynamics using standard low-cost hardware platforms.
· Bayesian framework for prediction of the remaining useful life of technical systems will contribute to the area of PHM beyond the current state of the art since fusion of information obtained from run-to-failure data, opinions of maintenance personnel and reliability data available from the manufacturers will be possible in a unified manner.
· Novel abstractions for model-oriented software design for control of continuous and batch control systems and novel domain-specific modelling languages, which will operate on the level of processes rather than the level of devices, as is the current state of the art.
· Current control schemes for tokamak reactor ITER make use of classical control methods; however, it is believed that model predictive control might fully exploit all the remaining margins and thus raise the quality of performance of the control loops.
· Major contributions in the area of fuel cells refer to (i) hierarchical control of stack and BoP that accounts for the condition of the components, (ii) novel soft sensors for CM and PHM of PEM FC’s and SOFC’s which is expected to double the current operating life of some of the commercial cells
· New methods for estimation of SOC and SOH of Li-ion batteries will bring more reliable RUL prediction. Genuine breakthrough is expected from collaboration with colleagues from National Institute of Chemistry as we are already conducting pioneering work in SOC, SOH and RUL estimation of Li-S batteries. This is an entirely new emerging technology, highly promising as Li-S cells are characterized by capacity 4X as high as any other known at the moment.
· More accurate mathematical models of distributed biological processes and novel model based control strategies, being validated on real plants, will provide valuable feedback results to the research community. It is also believed that they can significantly contribute to real higher plant efficiency and operation cost reduction.
Significance for the country
Control is the key infrastructural technology, which guarantees functionality of most of the systems and processes. To assure profound impact of the underlying research program on national economy and welfare at large, it is of utmost importance to perform successful transfers of research results into the industrial practice. This is highly compliant with what EU and Slovenia really need. It is namely well known (see e.g. [1]) that EU is world leader in a range of research disciplines, but the rate of conversion of this huge potential into marketable goods and services is rather unsatisfactory. Moreover, in the area of engineering sciences, Slovenia is at the top of Europe in terms of published scientific papers per capita [2], while at the same time it is in the tail in what concerns generating added value!
To contrast these anomalies, our group has pursued in building knowledge and expertise for transferring research results into the usable technologies, hence filling the gap known as the “valley of death”. Thereupon, it has gained reputation for its capacity to contribute solutions across the entire TRL scale (technology readiness level) from basic research up to the design and commissioning. We believe that the proposed research program will have strong societal impact in Slovenia also in the future. The indicators are (i) the accomplishments of the last research program (cf. item 11 in »The report of the results for the period 2009-2014 ARRS-RPROG-VP/2014«), (ii) capacity to join efforts with a broad range of partners as well as (iii) coordination of large joint projects on the national level.
The research results of the program will be important also for particular companies. It has been shown in the past that many ideas evolved from the research program seeded new projects and implementation with companies in Slovenia and abroad. This is central to our mission as it is essential that our solutions are adopted and further marketed by our partners, hence directly turning into growth of business and profit (in some cases it has been reported in millions of EUR).
An excerpt of the anticipated effects of the program on societal welfare includes:
· Effective control of the tokamak reactor is responsible for achieving the desired types of plasma, which is, in turn, crucial for the operation of a fusion power plant. We believe that with introduction of advance control algorithms we will be able (in cooperation with a Slovenian high-tech company) to contribute to the solution of this challenge. It is expected that with these results Slovenia’s engineers and scientists will extend their market share in the area of the ITER control system.
· Advances in condition monitoring and PHM will lead to embedded solutions for new generation of self-aware products. Our partner, a notable producer of the motors is expected to exploit these advances in producing next generation of smart and self-aware electrical motors.
· Optimized district heating of urban areas brings important financial benefits. With the Slovenian branch of one of the most renowned producer of district heating valves we are working on a new generation of intelligent valves in which new knowledge related to the research program is going to be incorporated. The intelligent valve is planned to be one of the major products of the company in the future.
· Research and implementation of advanced production control and supervision procedures (e.g. Process Analytic Techniques) will increase production performance and quality of products for various Slovene companies in the process industry (e.g. Cinkarna Celje, Mitol, Helios, etc.)
· New SOC and SOH estimators will be directly implementable as integral part of embedded battery management systems in backup systems and electric vehicles (e.g. electrical scooters developed by a Slovene company).
· Research in biological processes will be directly applicable in large ongoing projects of modern
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2015,
interim report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2015,
interim report
