Control, identification and diagnosis of networked and hybrid systems for fault tolerance

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This proposal seeks support for a research program on developing advanced fault tolerance techniques for technical systems/processes in networked and hybrid configurations. Driven by the global need for plant optimization and information integration, introducing networking into system automation and control becomes a prominent trend in process industries. As a result, we are now experiencing a dramatic change of technical systems from traditional homogeneous and centralized configurations to hybrid and distributed ones. The fault tolerance issue becomes more stringent in this case. Indeed, faults in one part of the system can propagate through and affect the other parts even in remote locations. As one important objective, we intend to study the constraints and resources brought by the networks, and propose new design tools for fault diagnosis based on network data transmissions instead of traditional wired signal transmissions. Fundamental issues, e.g. time-delay, data loss, and time-varying uncertainties will be considered. Another objective is to study fault tolerant control systems from a hybrid system perspective, where different system operations, e.g. multiple faults, are described by discrete modes while the system dynamic behavior under each mode is governed by continuous-time or discrete-time states evolutions. System identification for such a hybrid system and its application to fault tolerant control will be researched. In fact, fault detection can be treated as the discrete mode estimation problem while the switching control strategy can be adopted for control reconfiguration in this case. At last in this program we seek to develop practical applications of fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control by applying the results to real-world problems. The proposed research program is inter-disciplinary that involves various topics in systems and control, signals, information systems and operations research. It can find vast applications not only in safety critical and highly autonomous systems but also in process control, manufacturing and energy industries, which nowadays have an increasing requirement on reliability and sustainability.