Time and Event Driven Control Systems

传统的工业设施是通过工业计算机进行监测和控制的，在这种情况下，计时驾驶操作是常态。数字控制是这类时间驱动型系统的范例。这种数字控制范例使用了一个基本假设，即所有信号和系统都是在时间上周期性采样的。然而，由于两个原因，这样的假设在现代工业体系中不再有效。首先，集成新的通信和计算技术产生了一类新的系统，称为网络物理系统，其中网络协议和实时计算机算法随事件而演变，并由事件驱动。第二，大部分现有的工业设施仍由操作员通过警报监控系统进行操作。工业工厂能完全自动化吗，完全不需要操作员的干预？这将需要将报警系统与控制系统相结合；但报警系统是事件驱动的，违反了周期性假设。主要研究目标是为时间和事件驱动的混合控制系统的分析和设计开发一个统一的范例。这些系统给控制工程师和设计者带来了巨大的挑战，因为控制、计算和通信组件之间的交互，以及包括时间和事件驱动机制。研究项目包括时间和事件驱动系统的建模、状态估计和控制设计，控制和报警系统的集成，以及对控制和监测目的的重要性质的研究，如稳定性、控制性能、通信和计算资源使用、故障检测精度和故障诊断能力。研究问题复杂而具有挑战性，需要大量的创新和原创性来寻找有效和高效的新解决方案。由于事件驱动系统一般是时变的、非线性的，传统的基于频域的方法不适用。计划中的方法将是一般的时间域，使用连续时间过程的状态空间模型，时间和事件驱动的操作的基于时间的方程，闭环系统稳定性分析的基于李亚普诺夫的论点，以及用于分析和设计解决方案的优化工具。其新颖性和预期意义包括：它将解决控制系统界面临的主要挑战，并有望对理论和实践产生影响；它将为控制工程师和实践者提供分析和综合网络物理系统的新工具；最后，它将通过参与与技术和行业相关的研究型学生培训而使加拿大工业受益。

Traditional industrial facilities are monitored and controlled through industrial computers, in which time drivenoperations are the norm. Digital control is the paradigm for such time driven systems. This digital control paradigm uses a fundamental assumption that all signals andsystems are sampled periodically in time. However, such an assumption is no longer valid in modernindustrial systems because of two reasons. First, integrating new communication and computing technologies generates a new class of systems called cyber-physical systems, in which network protocols andreal-time computer algorithms evolve by events, and are event driven. Second, most existing industrial facilities are still operated by human operators through alarm monitoring systems. Could industrial plants be fully automated, without theintervention of operators at all? This would require incorporating alarm systems with controlsystems; but alarm systems are event driven, violating the periodicity assumption.The main research objective is to develop aunified paradigm for analysis and design of hybrid time and event driven control systems. Such systems present tremendous challenges for control engineers and designersbecause of the interactions among control, computation, and communication components, and inclusion of bothtime and event driven mechanism. The proposed research program covers modeling, state estimation, and control design of time and event driven systems, integration of control and alarm systems, and studying theproperties of importance to both control and monitoring purposes, such as stability, control performance, communication and computing resource usage, fault detection accuracy,and fault diagnosis capabilities.The research problems are complex and challenging, requiring a great deal of innovation and originality touncover new solutions which are effective and efficient. Since event driven systems are in general time-varying and nonlinear, traditional frequency-domain based methods are not applicable. Theplanned approach would be in general time-domain, using state-space models for continuous-time processes,time based equations for time and event driven operations, Lyapunov based argument for closed-loop stabilityanalysis, and optimization tools for analysis and design solutions.The proposed research program targets knowledge advance in the field of Control Systems which is relevant toelectrical, chemical, and mechanical Engineering. The novelty and expected significance include: It would address major challenges facing the control systems community, and hopefully impact both the theory andpractice; it would provide control engineers and practitioners with new tools for analysis and synthesis ofcyber-physical systems; finally, it would benefit Canadian industry by engaging in technology- and industry-relevant research student training.