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

该项目解决了在网络控制系统中确定在给定的空间点和时间点传送的信息的质量或价值的问题。现代网络系统通常具有以智能方式感知和驱动环境的能力。这一能力在很大程度上依赖于保证在正确的地点和正确的时间向系统提供正确的信息，以决定要采取的正确行动。这些保证的失败可能会导致工业过程控制、自主导航、机器人、自动药物输送等安全关键应用领域的灾难性后果。因此，在网络控制系统中采用正确的信息价值定义对国家福利至关重要。我们的研究在引入新的数学方法和设计工具方面，具有超出控制和信息领域的影响。在奠定理论基础时，我们希望在控制、信息和真实系统之间得出新颖的、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、扩大少数族裔学生参与计算机计算和留住少数族裔学生的计划以及广泛的传播活动来影响新一代学生的培训。在正确的地点和正确的时间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承认，它促使引入了几个实用功能，包括信息时代和密切相关的信息价值和信息质量。在这个项目中，我们的目标是证明普遍的度量，如信息年龄、信息价值和信息质量，不足以根据信息对动态系统控制的效用来表征信息的质量，我们刻画了系统依赖和任务依赖的效用度量，并描述了它在控制框架中的应用。一方面，我们考虑了发生在事件触发控制策略控制的反馈回路中的信息流。我们认为，关注事件触发控制将带来关于如何提供具有直接操作意义的定义的关键见解，该定义考虑了分辨率、时间、可靠性限制，并将它们与受控系统的参数联系起来。另一方面，我们考虑在信息经济学、风险管理和随机规划等不同领域中已经采用的一般性的、稍微更非正式的定义，我们将把它置于严格的控制论框架中。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，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.