Collaborative Research: The value of Information in Networked Control: a Utility Based Approach

该项目解决了网络控制系统中在给定的空间和时间点上传递的信息的质量或价值的确定问题。现代网络系统通常具有以智能方式对环境进行感测和致动的能力。这种能力强烈地依赖于保证在正确的时间和地点的正确信息可用于系统以决定采取正确的行动。这些保证的失败可能会导致灾难性的后果，在安全关键的应用，如工业过程控制，自主导航，机器人，自动药物输送，等等，因此，采用一个正确的定义的信息在网络控制系统的价值是至关重要的国家福利。我们的研究在引入新的数学方法和设计工具方面具有超越控制和信息领域的影响。在奠定理论基础的过程中，我们期望在控制、信息和真实的系统之间建立新颖的、协同的联系。拟议的研究还将通过本科生参与、研究生指导和课程开发、外联活动、扩大少数民族学生参与计算和保留的计划，在正确的时间和正确的地点提供正确的信息的重要性已经在网络控制系统的文献中得到了认可它引发了几个效用函数的引入，包括信息量和密切相关的信息价值和信息质量。在这个项目中，我们的目标是表明，universalmeasures，如年龄的信息，信息的价值，和信息的质量，是不足以表征的信息质量方面的效用控制的动态系统，我们描述了一个系统相关的和任务相关的效用度量和描述其应用程序的控制框架。一方面，我们认为信息流发生在事件触发控制策略的反馈回路。我们认为，专注于事件触发控制将带来关键的见解，如何提供一个定义与即时的操作意义，它考虑到分辨率，时间，可靠性的限制，并将它们与控制下的系统的参数。另一方面，我们考虑一个一般的，有点更非正式的定义，已在不同的领域，如信息经济学，风险管理和随机规划，我们将把它在一个严格的控制理论框架。这种方法与我们从事件触发控制中获得的见解完全兼容，并且通常适用于网络控制系统。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project addresses the problem of determining the quality or value of the information delivered at a given point in space and time in Networked Control Systems. Modern networking systems often have the capability of sensing and actuating on the environment in an intelligent way. This capability strongly relies on guarantees that the right information at the right place andat the right time is available to the system for deciding the right action to take. Failure of these guarantees can lead to catastrophic consequences in safety critical applications such as industrial processes control, autonomous navigation, robotics, automatic drug delivery, and so on. For this reason, adopting a proper definition of value of information in a networked control system is of paramount importance for national welfare. Our study has implications beyond the field of control and and information, in terms of the introduction of new mathematical methods and design tools. In laying a theoretical foundation, we expect to draw novel, synergistic connections between control, information, and real systems. The proposed research will also impact the training of a new generation of students through undergraduate student involvement, graduate mentoring and curriculum development, outreach activities, plans for broadening participation in computing and retention of minority students, and broad dissemination activities.The importance of delivering the right information at the right place and at the right time has been recognized in the literature of networked control systems and it sparked the introduction of several utility functions including the Age-of-Information and the closely related Value-of-Information and Quality of Information. In this project our objective is to show that universalmeasures, such as Age of Information, Value of Information, and Quality of Information, are insufficient to characterize the quality of information in terms of its utility for control of dynamical systems, and we characterize a system-dependent and task-dependent utility metric and describe its applications in the framework of control. On the one side, we consider the information flowoccurring in feedback loops governed by event-triggering control policies. We argue that focusing on event-triggering control will bring key insights on how to provide a definition with an immediate operational significance, which takes into account resolution, timing, reliability constraints, and relates them to the parameters of the system under control. On the other side, we consider ageneral, and somewhat more informal definition, that has been adopted in diverse fields such as information economics, risk management, and stochastic programming, and we will cast it in a rigorous control-theoretic framework. This approach is fully compatible with the insights we get from event-triggering control, and generally applicable to networked control systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.