Goal-Oriented Control Systems: from How to What
Prof Wen-Hua Chen, FIEEE CEng FIMechE FIET EPSRC Established Career Fellow Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering Loughborough University Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK. [email protected]
Abstract: Driven by the need of further increasing productivity and improving wellbeing and enabled by recent developments in AI and other digital technologies, we are moving into an era of highly automated society. Among others, autonomous driving, unmanned aviation, healthcare robots and automatic trading, are hot topics in media and daily discussion. Control engineering plays the central role in our current automation. Will it still play a similar role in future high levels of automation, or be replaced by AI or other technologies? This talk aims to trig more debates and discussion along these lines, particularly exploring the role of control engineering in future automated economy. It argues feedback is fundamental to high levels of automation, and control theories are essential in understanding not only the interactions between key functions like perception and decision making/planning in robotics and autonomous systems, but also on their interactions with environment and human. It argues that the current control theories could not provide effective analysis and design tools for future highly automated automation empowered by embedded AI functions and much more research is required. A Goal-Oriented Control System (GOCS) concept is introduced and discussed. Auto optimisation including maximum wave energy generation is used to illustrate the concept.
Bio: Dr Wen-Hua Chen holds Professor in Autonomous Vehicles in the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering at Loughborough University, UK. Prof. Chen has a considerable experience in control, signal processing and artificial intelligence and their applications in aerospace, automotive and agriculture systems. In the last 20 years, he has been working on the development and application of unmanned aircraft system and intelligent vehicle technologies, spanning autopilots, situational awareness, decision making, verification, remote sensing for precision agriculture and environment monitoring. He is a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of IEEE, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK. Recently Prof Chen was awarded a 5 years EPSRC (the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) Established Career Fellowship in developing control theories for next generation of control systems enabled by AI.