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Edited Books

Modeling, Design, and Simulation of Systems with Uncertainties


To describe the true behavior of most real-world systems with sufficient accuracy, engineers have to overcome difficulties arising from their lack of knowledge about certain parts of a process or from the impossibility of characterizing it with absolute certainty. Depending on the application at hand, uncertainties in modeling and measurements can be represented in different ways. For example, bounded uncertainties can be described by intervals, affine forms or general polynomial enclosures such as Taylor models, whereas stochastic uncertainties can be characterized in the form of a distribution described, for example, by the mean value, the standard deviation and higher-order moments.

The goal of this Special Volume on Modeling, Design, and Simulation of Systems with Uncertainties is to cover modern methods for dealing with the challenges presented by imprecise or unavailable information. All contributions tackle the topic from the point of view of control, state and parameter estimation, optimization and simulation.

Thematically, this volume can be divided into two parts. In the first we present works highlighting the theoretic background and current research on algorithmic approaches in the field of uncertainty handling, together with their reliable software implementation. The second part is concerned with real-life application scenarios from various areas including but not limited to mechatronics, robotics, and biomedical engineering.



Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2011

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-15956-5

Variable-Structure Approaches

Analysis, Simulation, Robust Control and Estimation of Uncertain Dynamic Processes

In recent years, numerous variable-structure approaches have been developed for control of nonlinear dynamic systems and for model-based estimation of non-measurable states and parameters. These approaches typically make use of first-order as well as higher-order sliding mode techniques and related procedures that are characterized by a variable-structure nature. One of their main advantages is the inherent proof of asymptotic stability. This stability proof is either performed offline during the corresponding controller as well as estimator design or online by the real-time evaluation of a suitable candidate for a Lyapunov function.

This book aims at presenting current research activities in the field of robust variable-structure systems. The scope equally consists in highlighting novel methodological aspects as well as in presenting the use of variable-structure techniques in industrial applications including their implementation on hardware for real-time control. Besides the suitable treatment of uncertainty in control and estimation tasks, also related aspects such as predictive control, fault tolerant system design, as well as robustness and stability analysis are in the focus of the presented application scenarios.

Springer International Publishing, 2016

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-31539-3

Special Issues of International Journals

Reliable Modeling, Simulation, Identification, Control and State Estimation for Dynamic Systems with Uncertainty (A Special Issue of Frontiers in Control Engineering)

Scope of the Special Issue: During the synthesis and verification of robust procedures for stabilizing controllers and state estimation schemes, engineers need to deal with missing knowledge about parts of a system’s structure, model simplifications, imprecisely identified parameters or external disturbances and noise influencing both system inputs and outputs. Therefore, uncertainty – in all its different forms such as aleatory or epistemic – is omnipresent in modeling, simulation and parameter identification of dynamic systems in each area of engineering, making its quantification and propagation an important research direction.

Until approximately the 1960s, the major possibility to deal with uncertainty was through probability. Since then, many other approaches or generalizations of the classical probability theory have appeared. Now, they are tailored for a given application and type of uncertainty. For instance, techniques from the area of interval and set-valued computation can be employed for representing and propagating bounded uncertainty (more generally, methods with result verification). Moreover, robust model-predictive control strategies, Lyapunov methods for a guaranteed proof of stability despite uncertainty, or robust stochastic filtering techniques can be used.

Keywords: Interval methods, Estimation and identification, Robust and predictive control, Verification & Validation, Uncertainty quantification

Invited Session: Estimation and Control-Based Interval Methods of Uncertain Systems (organized in the frame of the 9th International Conference on Systems and Control (ICSC'2021))

Organizers: Thach Ngoc Dinh (1), Andreas Rauh„ (2), Tarek Raïssi (1)
(1) Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France
(2) Lab-STICC, ENSTA Bretagne, Brest, France

For further details, see the following link: https://lias.labo.univ-poitiers.fr/icsc/icsc2021/index.php

Scope of the Invited Session: The key aspects of this invited session are methods for estimation and control of dynamical systems which take into account the presence of uncertainty and disturbances due to measurement noise, unknown parameters, or unknown inputs. The organizers encourage the presentation of research work related but not limited to observer design, filtering, feedback control, identification, (on-line) model predictive and fault-tolerant control of uncertain systems using interval methods.

Invited Session: Complex systems: Recent Advances in Robust Observation and Control (organized in the frame of the conference on Complex systems: Recent Advances in Robust Observation and Control (COSY 2022))

Organizers: Thach Ngoc Dinh (1), Andreas Rauh„ (2), Thomas Chevet (3), Tarek Raïssi (1)
(1) Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France
(2) Carl von Ossietzky Universitat Oldenburg, Department of Computing Science, Germany
(3) DTIS, ONERA, Universite Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France

For further details, see the following link: https://eventi.unibo.it/cosy2022

Scope of the Invited Session: The goal of this invited session is to bring together researchers who employ robust methods for modeling, estimation, control, and approximation, to present benefits in numerous use cases of these methods dealing with complex systems to the broad control community, and to stimulate further activities in this important research area. The proposed invited session will provide a forum for presenting and discussing the latest developments on theoretical and computational aspects in robust control and observation of complex systems by both junior and senior faculties across different academic disciplines (electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, computer science) and from different geographic regions. While all the papers center around the theme of the session, they cover a wide range of theoretical approaches and application topics of great interest to control researchers from academia and industry.

13th Summer Workshop on Interval Methods 2022
July 19-21, 2022; Hanover, Germany

Abstract submission deadline: 12 June 2022

The Summer Workshop on Interval Methods provides a platform for researchers working on or with interval methods and their applications.

We encourage all researchers to use the conference as a forum for lively discussion of current research and the latest techniques. Therefore, not only fully elaborated new results, but also review papers summarizing previous work in a concise (and critically analyzed) way, as well as reports on ongoing research activities are welcome.

To ensure the visibility of our workshop, peer-reviewed full papers of accepted and presented abstracts will be collected and published after SWIM.

SWIM aims at gathering researchers working on/with interval methods and their applications. The goal is to review the state-of-the-art in this field. Contributions can be for example in the domain of 

• Verification and Validation
• Robust and Nonlinear Control Systems
• State Estimation
• Interval Observer Design
• Parameter Identification
• Fault Detection and Diagnosis, Fault Tolerant Systems
• Stability, Reachability, Observability
• Reliable Software Design
• Robotics
• Mathematics
• Verified Solution of Algebraic and Dynamic System Models
• Verified Numerics and Scientific Computing
• Linear Algebra
• and any other applications of interval methods, verified numerics, and other related set-membership techniques (e.g.: affine arithmetics, polytopes, etc.)