Nonlinear Model Predictive Control: From Theory to Application

Professor Frank Allgower

Director, Institute for Systems Theory in Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Stuttgart

Friday, October 10
4:00pm - 5:00pm
Engineering IV, 38-138

Abstract

In the past decade model predictive control (MPC), also referred to as receding horizon control, or moving horizon control, has become a preferred control strategy for a large number of industrial processes. The main reasons for this popularity include the ability to explicitly handle constraints and to consider multivariable processes with potentially many manipulated and controlled variables. In this presentation we will give an overview over the area of model predictive control with special emphasis on nonlinear model predictive control. After a brief discussion of the history and impact of MPC we will discuss recent results regarding system theoretic properties like stability, robustness, output feedback and performance of the closed loop. With a number of applications we will demonstrate that by using specially tailored optimization methods even large problems, having hundreds of states, can be controlled efficiently using NMPC methods.

Bio

Frank Allgower is the director of the Institute for Systems Theory in Engineering and professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He studied Engineering Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Stuttgart and spend a year at UCLA during that time as a Fulbright exchange student. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Stuttgart. Prior to his appointment as professor at the University of Stuttgart in 1999 he held a professorship for nonlinear systems at the Automatic Control Laboratory of ETH Zurich. He has been a visiting research associate at the California Institute of Technology and the NASA Ames Research Center and has spent a year as visiting research scientist with the Central Research and Development Organization of the DuPont Company in Wilmington, DE. He is currently with the Center for Control and Computation at the University of California at Santa Barbara for a sabbatical stay until March next year. Frank is editor for Automatica, associate editor for the Journal of Process Control and the European Journal of Control and is on the editorial board of several further journals including the Journals of Robust and Nonlinear Control and Chemical Engineering Science. He is organizer and co-organizer of several international conferences including the 2003 IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems and the 2003 IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes. Frank serves the academic community in a number of further functions, among others as chair of the IFAC TC on Nonlinear Systems, as member of the council of the European Union Control Association and as member of the council of the German Society for Measurement and Control (GMA). His main research areas are nonlinear and robust control, predictive control, identification of nonlinear systems, application of modern systems and control theoretical methods to various fields including chemical process control, mechatronics, biomedical systems and nanotechnology. He has published over 100 scientific articles.

Contact: Professor Jeff Shamma (shamma@ucla.edu)