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Two Prestigious Awards for Breakthrough in Feedback Control over Wireless Networks
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[Deutsche Version unter "read more"]
Researchers from the Networked Embedded Systems Lab of the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) at TU Dresden, the Max Planck and Cyber Valley Research Group on Intelligent Control Systems at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Stuttgart/Tübingen, and the Computer Engineering and Networks Lab at ETH Zurich have demonstrated for the first time fast feedback control over dynamic wireless multi-hop networks with provable stability guarantees.
For their work the team received the Best Paper Award of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), which is the premier publishing venue in the area of cyberphysical systems. The researchers also ran a live demo of their system at CPS-IoT Week with multiple inverted pendulums representing physical systems and 20 embedded devices placed throughout the demo area. For this, they received the Best Demo Award of the prestigious ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN).
Closing feedback loops reliably, fast, and over long distances is key to emerging applications. For example, robot motion control and swarm coordination for future smart production systems require update intervals of tens of milliseconds between untethered devices. Low-power wireless communication technology, such as IEEE 802.15.4 or Bluetooth Low Energy, is preferred for its low cost, small form factor, and flexibility, especially if the devices support multi-hop communication. So far, however, feedback control over wireless multi-hop networks has only been show for update
intervals of seconds, stationary devices, and without any guarantees on closed-loop stability.
In mid-April at the Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things Week (CPS-IoT Week) in Montreal, Canada, the research team from TU Dresden, MPI for Intelligent Systems Stuttgart/Tübingen, and ETH Zurich presented for the first time in public a new approach to reliable feedback control and coordination of multiple physical systems over a dynamic wireless multi-hop network at update intervals of 20-50 milliseconds. Based on a co-design of the wireless embedded hardware/software components and the closed-loop control system, their approach tames typical wireless imperfections such as message loss and jitter so that these can be tackled by well-known control techniques or safely neglected. As a result, their solution is amenable to a formal end-to-end analysis of all system components, which they exploit to provably guarantee closed-loop stability for physical systems with linear time-invariant (LTI) dynamics.
Moreover, during operation their system automatically adapts to changes in the environment or the application requirements by dynamically switching between different sensing, actuation, and distributed control tasks executing on state-ofthe-art ultra-low-power microcontrollers (e.g., ARM Cortex-M4), while maintaining stable control performance in the face of significant network dynamics (e.g., mobile or failing devices).
For their work the team received the Best Paper Award of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), which is the premier publishing venue in the area of cyberphysical systems. The researchers also run a live demo of their system at CPS-IoT Week with multiple inverted pendulums representing physical systems and 20 embedded devices placed throughout the demo area. For this, they received the Best Demo Award of the prestigious ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN). A video showing part of the demo can be found at https://youtu.be/19xPHjnobkY.
Title of ICCPS paper: "Feedback Control Goes Wireless: Guaranteed Stability over Low-power Multihop Networks" (Best Paper Award)
DOI: 10.1145/3302509.3311046
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3311046
Publication date: April 16, 2019
Authors: Fabian Mager (TUD), Dominik Baumann (MPI), Romain Jacob (ETH), Lothar Thiele (ETH), Sebastian Trimpe (MPI), and Marco Zimmerling (TUD)
Title of IPSN paper: “Demo Abstract: Fast Feedback Control and Coordination with Mode Changes for Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems" (Best Demo Award)
DOI: 10.1145/3302506.3312483
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3312483
Publication date: April 16, 2019
Authors: Fabian Mager (TUD), Dominik Baumann (MPI), Romain Jacob (ETH), Lothar Thiele (ETH), Sebastian Trimpe (MPI), and Marco Zimmerling (TUD)
The research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the SPP 1914 project “EcoCPS” (grants ZI 1635/1-1 and TR 1433/1-1), the Emmy Noether project “NextIoT” (grants ZI 1635/2-1), the Cluster of Excellence “Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed)”, the Cyber Valley Initiative, and the Max Planck Society.
The Networked Embedded Systems Lab was established at cfaed in 2015. The group is headed by Dr. Marco Zimmerling and investigates the design and analysis of dependable and sustainable hardware/software solutions for emerging cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things.
[Deutsche Version]
Forscher der TU Dresden werden mit zwei renommierten Preisen für einen Durchbruch in der funkbasierten Regelung und Koordination physikalischer Systeme ausgezeichnet
Im Rahmen der Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things Week (CPS-IoT Week), welche vom 15. bis 18. April in Montreal stattfand, präsentierte das Forscherteam des Networked Embedded Systems Labs der TU Dresden in Kooperation mit dem Max Planck Institut für Intelligente Systeme Stuttgart/Tübingen und der ETH Zürich zum ersten Mal öffentlich ihren neuen Ansatz zur Regelung und Koordination von physikalischen Systemen über dynamische drahtlose Multi-Hop-Netze. Der neuartige Ansatz ist für viele zukunftsweisende Anwendungen wie etwa im Bereich der intelligenten Produktion und dem Internet der Dinge der Schlüssel, um die hohen Anforderungen an die Zuverlässigkeit mit effizienten und ebenso finanziell attraktiven Lösungen erfüllen zu können. Das vorgeschlagene System ermöglicht die flexible Vernetzung von räumlich verteilter Sensorik, Leitsteuerung und Aktorik auf Basis mobiler batteriebetriebener Kleinstrechner. Im laufenden
Betrieb passt sich das System automatisch den aktuellen Gegebenheiten und Anforderungen an, indem es nahtlos zwischen verschiedenen Regelungs- und Koordinationsaufgabe wechselt, ohne dabei mathematisch beweisbar die Stabilität der geschlossenen Regelkreise zu gefährden.
Für ihre Arbeit erhielten die Forscher den Best Paper Award der ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), welche die weltweit führende Fachkonferenz auf dem Gebiet der Cyber-physischen Systeme ist. Zudem präsentierte das Forscherteam eine Live-Demo ihres Systems mit mehreren inversen Pendeln als physikalische Systeme. Hierfür wurden sie mit dem Best Demo Award der renommierten ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) ausgezeichnet. Ein Teil der gezeigten Demo ist in diesem Video zu sehen.
Titel des ICCPS-Papers (erschienen am 16.04.2019): "Feedback Control Goes Wireless: Guaranteed Stability over Low-power Multi-hop Networks"
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3311046
Autoren: Fabian Mager, Dominik Baumann, Romain Jacob, Lothar Thiele, Sebastian Trimpe, Marco Zimmerling
Titel des IPSN-Papers (erschienen am 16.04.2019): "Demo Abstract: Fast Feedback Control and Coordination with Mode Changes for Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems"
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3312483
Autoren: Fabian Mager, Dominik Baumann, Romain Jacob, Lothar Thiele, Sebastian Trimpe, Marco Zimmerling
Die Finanzierung des Forschungsvorhabens erfolgte durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) im Rahmen des Projektes "EcoCPS" (ZI 1635/1-1 und TR 1433/1-1), des Emmy-Noether-Projektes "NextIoT" (ZI 1635/2-1) und des Exzellenzclusters "Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed)" sowie durch die Cyber-Valley-Initiative und die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
Das Networked Embedded Systems Lab ist seit November 2015 am Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) der TU Dresden angesiedelt und beschäftigt sich unter der Leitung von Dr. Marco Zimmerling mit dem Entwurf und der Analyse von zuverlässigen und nachhaltigen Hardware/Software-Lösungen für Cyber-physische Systeme und das Internet der Dinge.