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Panel 16 – systems science
current activities in convex optimization for control. This department is
in the position to become one of the world leaders on this topic. Note that
aspects of composition are important, thus autonomy and decentralized
techniques are preferred. Overall, we consider that the chances that this
research direction becomes outstanding are very high.
A second important research direction is the combination of networked
embedded systems and modeling support for design and verification. This
is an extrapolation of the current direction of research on real-time. As
part of the whole research program, event based control (as opposed to
the classical paradigm of time-based control also referred to as sampled
control) seems the most promising and best opportunity. In our opinion,
studies on event based control should consider 1/ the control algorithm
and its robustness, in the context of 2/ the given supporting distributed
computing infrastructure with its networking aspects. Thus it is
important that the group gets close connections to other groups inside
or outside Lund leading the research regarding abstract models of such
architectures. The close combination of control and architecture models
makes this department in the position to become one of the important
actors worldwide. We are less convinced by other aspects of the program.
They do not seem unique to Lund but are rather well studied in many
places and we do not see why Lund would have a better chance in the
competition. We see this track having high chances to become a very
good one and some chance to become excellent.
In addition, the department considers investing in applications in an opportunistic
way. This is fine but we think it is preferable to try to become
somehow specialized in a smaller number of well selected application
areas. This is considered good.
The panel strongly supports the overall research direction of “model
based control system development based on high-level descriptions”. However,
the panel was surprised that no mention was found of Modelica in
future plans. Some panel members found this embarrassing, considering
the strongly increasing momentum of Modelica in industry; other panel
members were comfortable with the idea that this topic has been hand
over to other actors, be them academic or industrial.
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