Professor Rolf Findeisen of the Control and Cyber-physical Systems Laboratory at the TU Darmstadt, Germany, has visited CDSL on last November 26. Following his doctoral supervisor, Leibniz Prize winner Frank Allgöwer, research interests of his group focus on model predictive control, fusing learning and control, and cyber-physical systems. He delivered a seminar under the title of “Fusing Machine Learning and Predictive Control for the Safe and Optimal Operation of Autonomous Systems“.
Autonmous systems should operate safely yet optimally under uncertain conditions. Machine learning approaches, such as Gaussian process or neural networks, allow adaptation to uncertainties based on measurements and data. Predictive control, on the other hand, ensures safety and optimality using model knowledge. Prof. Findeisen presented a method to integrate model knowledge into learning in order to achieve a safe, stable, and optimal behavior.
Learning based control has become one of the research interests of CDSL recently so this seminar was a great guideline for our students and we expect further ideas to be developed on fusing machine learning approaches and control theory.