OC 5.

Organic Computing
Chapter 5: Control of technical Systems

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Overview
This chapter focuses on the basics of control of technical systems: Basics of control engineering Adaptive controllers Uncertainties in design Robustness Reliability

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Basics
The main goal of control systems is to improve the behavior of the system A Process:

Input

Process

Output

If we have an exact knowledge of the process (controlled variable behavior), we can use a Feedforward Control. Disturbance Input Control System Process Output

The control system does not observe the output of the process it is controlling.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

Feedforward is being used to maintain some desired state of the system. Everything is predefined The control system responds to a known disturbance.

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Feedforward
Example: The task is to control the system such that the shafts rotate with equal speeds in spite of different possible friction levels (disturbances).

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Feedforward
A desired speed should be achieved. The torque to accelerate the mass to a desired speed can be easily computed if we assume a frictionless system.

Disturbance

Control System

Process

Computes the correct Torque value

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

Speed reference

Speed

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Feedforward vs. Feedback

Unfortunately the real world is full of non-linearities that limit the effectiveness of such feed forward control schemes: Different friction levels come from different sources and vary over time, therefore some feedback is introduced:
Disturbance Speed reference

Control System

Process

Speed

Computes the correct Torque value to control the speed.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.7

Feedback
Feedback Control: In every feedback loop, information about the result of a transformation or an action is sent back to the input of the system in the form of input data. Input Control System

Disturbance

Process

Output

Feedback systems also appear in non-technical systems.

Opinion

Feedback

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Positive vs. Negative Feedback

Positive Feedback: If the feedback to the system influences the output of the process in the same direction as the preceding observed changes, it is positive feedback - its effects are cumulative: there is exponential growth or decline.

Start

Output

Explosion

Blocking
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

Time Positive Feedback: exponential growth or decline (diverging behavior)

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Positive vs. Negative Feedback

Negative Feedback: If the feedback to the system influences the output of the process in the opposite direction, it is negative feedback - its effects stabilize the system: there is maintenance of the equilibrium.

Output

Start

Goal

Start
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

Time Negative Feedback: Maintenance of equilibrium and convergence

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Adaptive systems and control systems

An adaptive system is a system that is able to adapt its behavior according to changes in its environment or in parts of the system itself. Control systems utilize feedback loops in order to sense conditions in their environment and adapt accordingly. The aim of control engineering, beside the others, is to determine: the model of the controller the parameters of the controller It is desirable that the controllers adapt their parameters to the changing environment parameters Adaptive Controllers
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Adaptive Control
Adaptive Controllers: In Adaptive Control, the controller parameters are variable and there is a mechanism to adjust them online based on the signals in the system. Example: A robot carrying an unknown load (a load of uncertain mass properties). There are two ways to construct the adaptive controllers: 1- Model-reference adaptive control 2- Self-tuning method
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Adaptive Control
Model-reference adaptive control: requires a reference model for the controller in order to compute the error of the systems output and the adaptation law sets the parameters of the controller so that the error is minimized. Reference model
Disturbance

Ref.

Control System

Process

error

Adaptation law Estimates the parameters

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Adaptive Control
Self-tuning adaptive control: Based on the input and output of the process, the estimator estimates parameters of the controller.

Disturbance

Ref.

Control System

Process

The selected Parameters must be robust with respect to the changes caused by the disturbance.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

Estimator

This is an on-line estimator

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Robustness
Searching for robust solutions: In many real world applications the adaptation is not possible: 1- the environment changes too quickly 2- the environment cannot be monitored closely enough 3- the changes happen after the commitment to a particular solution has been made. In such cases, one must search for solutions that perform well in all possible future scenarios.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

The property of being insensitive to the slight changes of the environment or noise in the decision variables is called Robustness.

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Robustness
Example: A change affects the quality of the solution on the thin peak much more that the solution on the plateau.

f(x)

We consider the disturbance to appear in design variables.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.16

Uncertainties in the design

Different kinds of uncertainties: 1. Aleatory Uncertainty describes the inherent stochastic variation of the physical system. such variation is usually caused by the random nature of the input data. Variations can occur in the form of manufacturing tolerances or uncontrollable variations in the external environment. They are usually modeled as random phenomena characterized by probability distributions. The probability distributions are constructed using the relative frequency of the occurrence of events, which requires large amounts of information. Most often such information does not exist and designers usually make assumptions on the characteristics (mean, variances, correlation coefficients) of the random phenomena causing the variation.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.17

Uncertainties in the design

2. Epistemic Uncertainty Epistemic uncertainty also known as subjective uncertainty arises due to ignorance lack of knowledge incomplete information decision making (due to trade-offs) In engineering systems, the epistemic uncertainty can be Parametric: uncertain parameters for which the available information is inadequate Model-based: improper model of the systems usually due to the lack of knowledge about the physics of the system
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Uncertainties in the design

3. Numerical Uncertainty (Error) commonly associated with the numerical models used for modeling and simulation. typical examples: - round-off errors - truncation errors - error associated with the solution of ODEs and PDEs which typically uses discretization schemes.

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Definitions of Robustness
Possible definitions for a Robust Solution assuming a certain range of uncertainties: 1- Maximize the minimum possible outcome: This is appropriate for problems like when: - an investment strategy is sought that in no possible way leads to bankruptcy. - flight control strategies must not crash the airplane.

2- Trade-off between quality and variance: If the focus is on small variance, one might explicitly look at the trade-off between quality and variance.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.20
f(x)

Robustness
x

3- Maximize the expected performance: The expected performance (effective quality) can be calculated as follows:

feff (x)= E(f(x+ ) = p( ).f(x+ ) d

Probability density function of disturbance Because f is not known in a closed form, feff cannot be easily computed. But it can be estimated by methods like Monte Carlo integration. Monte Carlo Integration: Sampling over a number of realization of . Each sample corresponds to one fitness evaluation.

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Sampling methods
Integral Approximation: For a given point x0 the integral can be estimated by evaluating a set of n samples xi = x0+ in the neighborhood of x0:
1 feff (x0 ) = n f(x0 + ) i=1 n

Sampling methods: 1- Random Method 2- Antithetic 3- Stratified 4- Latin Hypercube

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Sampling Methods
1- Random Method Random Method: Samples points at random

2- Antithetic Antithetic: produces pairs of disturbances which lead to negatively correlated estimation. For uniformly distributed disturbances, the first vector is selected at random (), the second is then chosen as -.
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Sampling Methods
3- Stratified Stratified: Divides the space of possible disturbances into possible equal properties. Draws one disturbance from every region.

4- Latin Hypercube Latin Hypercube: In order to draw k samples, every dimension is divided into k parts. k samples are chosen such that each quantile in each dimension is covered by exactly one sample.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Robustness vs. Reliability

Robust designs are designs at which the variation in the performance functions is minimal. Reliable designs are designs at which the chance of failure of the system is low.

constraints f(x) f(x)

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Reliability
Example : x2 Feasible region Reliable solution A

Deterministic Optimum Infeasible region Infeasible region

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

x1

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How to compute the reliability of a solution?

A desired reliability value R can be measured for solution A: The probability of having an feasible solution created through uncertainties from solution A is:

P (g j ( x, d ) 0 ) R j

j = 1,2, K , J

Where gj denotes the jth constraint (e.g. the distance from some infeasible region). x and d are the vectors of uncertain and deterministic design parameters. The quantity Rj is the required reliability (within [0, 1] ) for satisfying the jth constraint. A computational method is required to estimate the probability.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.27

How to compute the reliability?

Simulation method A set of N different parameter settings is created by following the known distribution of variation of x. For each sample each constraint gj is evaluated and checked for possible constraint violation. If r cases (of N) satisfy all gj constraints, we can replace with
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

From [H. Agrawal 2004]

P (g j ( x, d ) 0) R j
r N

j = 1,2,K , J

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How to compute the reliability?

This is a simple method and works well when the desired reliability R is not very close to one. A major drawback is that the sample size N needed for finding r must be large enough, such that at least one infeasible case is present in the sample Computationally expensive Biased Monte-Carlo simulation can be used to solve this.

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Controller in the generic architecture

The task of controller is to : Select an observation model Control the SuOC Input Goals. Control System Process SuOC Observer Output Output from observer

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

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Model Predictive Control (MPC)

Predictive control is a form of control which incorporates the prediction of a system behavior into its formulation. The prediction serves to estimate the future values of system variables based on the available information on the current status of the system. The prediction is used to optimize necessary control actions: meaning to drive or maintain the system in a state which satisfies the objectives. MPC is used when the future behavior of the system might be quite different from that currently perceived. In particular, the current model for prediction might be just a currently feasible simplified abstraction of a much more complex system, i.e. the model has to be updated whenever the real behavior of the system deviates too much from the predictions.

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OC 5.31

MPC
Input Process output

Prediction and control horizon in MPC:

output desired output prediction horizon

measured output

Reference trajectory

predicted output

time Input now

control horizon Past Future time

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OC 5.32

MPC
model
Disturbance desired output (reference)

Predictive controller

Input

Process

output

Procedure in predictive controller: 1. Sample the output of the process. 2. Check for necessary updates of the model due to deviations between observed and previously predicted behavior. 3. Use the model of the process to predict its future behavior over a prediction horizon, when the control action is applied for a control horizon. 4. Calculate the optimal control sequence (Input to the process) that minimizes the error between Input, output and reference. 5. Apply the input to the process and repeat the procedure for the next sampling time.

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OC 5.33

MPC
model
Disturbance desired output (reference)

Predictive controller

Input

Process

output

MPC is a particularly attractive option, if the system behavior over time is not adequately modeled by one linear model, but may be approximated with a certain accuracy by a sequence of linear models M1, M2, , Mi,

Without using prediction, it would not be feasible to detect online whether it is necessary to transform model Mi into model Mi+1.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.34

Distributed control
A distributed control system (DCS) refers to a control system, in which the controller elements are not centralized but are distributed throughout the system. Central Control
Dist.
Control Dist.

Distributed Control
Dist. Process

Control

Process

Control

Process

Dist. Control Process

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

In each subsystem, local control inputs are computed using the measurements and reduced-order models. the sub-system is controlled by one or more controllers. The entire system may be networked for communication and monitoring.

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Distributed control
In large-scale applications, it is useful (or sometimes necessary) to have distributed or decentralized control schemes, as the global measurement of the system parameters is not possible. The main challenge in distributed control is to achieve some degree of coordination among the controllers. In distributed control, we have the same problems of emergent phenomena as outlined for self-organizing systems. Distributed control systems (DCSs) are used in many industrial applications to monitor and control distributed systems, like: Electrical power grids Traffic signals Sensor networks Economic systems Large scale distributed telescopes (in astronomy)

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

OC 5.36

Organic Computing and Controllers

In OC, we have different kinds of controllers: Central, distributed, and Multi-level. Model-predictive controllers might help to efficiently control the behavior of highly complex systems.

central observer controller

O C SuOC

distributed
O C SuOC O C SuOC O C

Multi-level observer controller

O C SuOC SuOC

SuOC

SuOC O C SuOC O C SuOC

O C SuOC

O C SuOC O C SuOC

SuOC

SuOC
O C SuOC

SuOC O C SuOC

S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck

O C

O C

O C

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Summary
In this chapter we had a very brief view on different aspects of control engineering: Basics in control In dynamic environments, adaptive controllers can adjust the controller parameters to achieve desirable controller model and parameters. An essential task of control engineering is to guarantee robust and reliable system behavior. Model-predictive controllers incorporate a prediction of the future system behavior and support the stepwise linear (or simplified) control of highly complex systems. Distributed control is an essential aspect dealing with large scale applications, but has to cope with the problems of emergence. All these issues can be used effectively in OC systems. So far, control engineering does not provide adequate answers to the key problems addressed in OC systems related to controlled self-organization. Next: As learning plays an important role in organic computing, the next chapter surveys different machine learning methods.
S. Mostaghim, H. Schmeck