Martha Grover (USA)

Georgia Institute of Technology

Plenary talk: Control of Self-Assembly with Dynamic Programming

This conference paper updates a previously-reported methodology for establishing feedback control of self-assembly (Griffin et al. (2016b)). The methodology combines dimension reduction, supervised learning, and dynamic programming to obtain an optimal feedback control policy for reaching a desired assembled state. The strategy is further demonstrated, with experimental results, for two applications: control of colloidal assembly (to produce perfect colloidal crystals) and control of crystallization from solution (to produce crystals of desired average size).

Biography: Dr. Martha Grover is a Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. She earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech. She joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2002, and received an NSF CAREER award in 2004. In 2011 she received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the Computing and Systems Technology Division of AIChE. Her research program is dedicated to understanding, modeling, and engineering the self-assembly of atoms and small molecules to create larger scale structures and complex functionality. Her approach draws on process systems engineering, combining modeling and experiments in applications dominated by kinetics, including surface deposition, crystal growth, polymer reaction engineering, and colloidal assembly. She is a member of the NSF/NASA Center for Chemical Evolution, and the Georgia Tech Decision and Control Laboratory.

Jaime Moreno (MEX)

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Plenary talk: Robust control and observation of nonlinear processes using discontinuities

Uncertainties and perturbations are common phenomena when trying to control and/or observe a nonlinear process, and achieving the control objective under these circumstances is an important and challenging task. A strategy to deal with uncertainties/perturbations is the use of switching. In particular, the (Higher Order) Sliding Mode (HOSM) Control and Observation algorithms have shown their ability to successfully deal with these problems. In this talk we will first overview a Lyapunov-based approach to design HOSM controllers and observers developed recently in our group, which allows a systematic study of their convergence and performance properties. Then we show that a discontinuous version of the classical and very successful PI controller can be developed, that has very strong robustness properties. Finally, we illustrate the possibility of using discontinuous observers to estimate the variables of non observable systems. We illustrate this using a simple bioreactor and an electromechanical system.

Biography:Dr. Jaime Moreno received his PhD degree (Summa cum Laude) in Electrical Engineering (Automatic Control) from the Helmut Schmidt Universität, Hamburg, Germany in 1995. The Diploma-Degree in Electrical Engineering (Automatic Control) from the Universität zu Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany in 1990, and the Licentiate-Degree (with honors) in Electronic Engineering from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellin, Colombia in 1987. Since 1995 he is researcher at the Institute of Engineering at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City. He is full Professor of Automatic Control and the Head of the Electrical and Computing Department at the Institute of Engineering of UNAM. He is Investigador Titular C and PRIDE D (the highest possible level at the UNAM) and Investigador Nacional Nivel III in the SNI, the highest level in the Mexican system. He has served as the chair of the Technical Committee (TC8.4) for Biosystems and Bioprocesses of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) from 2008 to 2011, and from 2014 to 2017 he was the Chair of the Coordinating Committee of CC8 (Bio & Ecological Systems) of IFAC. He is the author and editor of 8 books, 9 book chapters, 1 patent, author and co-author of more than 400 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, which have received more than 4100 citations. He has supervised 18 PhD and 33 M.Sc. theses. His current research interests include robust and non-linear control, in particular, with emphasis on Lyapunov methods to higher order sliding modes control with applications to biochemical (wastewater treatment processes) and electromechanical processes, and the design of nonlinear observers.

Alf Isaksson (SWE)

ABB Corporate Research

Plenary talk: The autonomous industrial plant - Future of process engineering, Operations and maintenance

Today media report almost daily about new advances in self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. For autonomous driving there are already established standards with levels from 0 to 5 describing the steps from complete manual operation to fully autonomous driving. While many people - and of course in particular the automotive industry - believe fully self-driving cars are feasible in the near future one may ask how applicable this is in our domain? Is it realistic to aim towards a fully autonomous chemical plant? What do we even mean by an autonomous plant?

This talk will make an effort in defining levels of autonomy for a process industry. However, when the automotive standard focuses completely on operation of the car, it is for process and manufacturing industry equally important to take steps towards also autonomous engineering and autonomous maintenance. We will illustrate steps towards higher levels of autonomy by recent examples from different industrial applications.

Biography:Dr. Alf Isaksson received an MSc in Computer Engineering and a PhD in Automatic Control, in 1983 and 1988 respectively, both from Linköping University, Sweden. After graduating he stayed at Linköping University until 1991 as an Assistant Professor. From 1991 to 1992 he spent one year as a Research Associate at The University of Newcastle, Australia. Returning to Sweden in 1992 Isaksson moved to the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where eventually in 1999 he was promoted to full Professor. During this time he also spent 6 months in 1999 at the Pulp & Paper Centre of University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada as visiting professor. In 2001 he made the shift from academic to industrial research and joined ABB Corporate Research in Västerås, Sweden. After a specialist career culminating in an appointment to Corporate Research Fellow in 2009, he is now since January 2014 Group Research Area Manager with the responsibility of internally coordinating all research in Control at all of ABB's 7 research centers world-wide. At the same time Isaksson still kept a connection to the academic world as Adjunct Professor in Automatic Control at Linköping University 2006-2015, where he was leading a Process Industry Center from 2009 to 2012.