The main objective of the CONNECT CRAFT proposal is to achieve a significant increase in the range of control problems to which advanced optimisation-based controllers can be reliably applied. This will be achieved through the investigation and development of an integrated set of advanced control algorithms and software/hardware tools for applications in a broad range of systems which exhibit significant operational difficulties and limitations (e.g. industrial systems requiring fast control actions, safety- critical applications as encountered in automotive control or in chemical reactor control, energy application, wire manufacturing requiring extremely tight product quality control etc.).
The work in the proposed project will include research activities and novel RTD approaches for:
(i) The development of more efficient and fast MPC techniques utilising recent advances developed by the RTD performers in the area of parametric programming;
(ii) The design of robust model-based controllers, for hybrid and continuous dynamic systems;
(iii) The development of reduced order-models.
The activities of the proposal will make extensive use of a field of mathematics, called parametric optimization, to shift offline (hence out of the controller) the computational burden traditionally associated with model-based optimal control techniques. The remarkable feature of the CONNECT advanced controllers is that the control performance is identical to what would have been achieved with a full on-line optimization approach but without the computational burden and related software. The consortium brings together 3 leading research groups in process systems engineering, control, optimisation, and embedded systems design and 5 SMEs and 2 end-users which will perform software development activities and additionally provide real-life industrial problems from the polymer, energy generation, chemical, automotive and wire manufacturing sectors.