TECoSA Seminar – Control Systems in the presence of Computational Problems

We aim to bring you a TECoSA Seminar on the first Thursday of each month during term-time. For Autumn 2022, the talks will be on-line or hybrid. All are welcome to attend and we look forward to some lively discussions.  Members can register via the invitations; non-members can register via email to tecosa-admin @kth . se

Our October seminar is with Professor Martina Maggio from the Computer Science Department at Saarland University and also the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University.

The session will be given in via Zoom (https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/66857695267).

ABSTRACT:  Feedback control is pervasive in our lives, as it often lays the foundation of technology we daily interface with. Control systems are at the core of the energy distribution infrastructure, govern the behavior of vehicles, and are embedded into household appliances like washing machines. Controllers usually use sensors, that provide information about the physical environment, to calculate the values that actuators should assume to fulfill specific requirements. For example, adaptive cruise control systems use the throttle to automatically adjust the vehicle’s speed, while maintaining a safe distance from vehicles ahead.

The actuator values are calculated using hardware and software. Hence, the computation of the new control signals is subject to accidental faults, systematic issues, and software bugs. However, in many cases, these computational problems can safely be ignored. This talk will introduce the problem of analyzing the behavior of control software subject to computational problems, and verifying when no corrective action is needed, i.e., when the control software is able to fulfill the system requirements despite the presence of computational problems.

BIO:  Martina Maggio is a Professor at the Computer Science Department, Saarland University since March 2020 and also an Associate Professor at the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University since 2017.  She completed her Ph.D. at Politecnico di Milano, working with Alberto Leva on the applications of control-theoretical tools for the design of computing systems. During her Ph.D. she spent one year as a visiting graduate student at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, working with Anant Agarwal and Hank Hoffmann on the Self-Aware Computing project.  In 2019, she spent a sabbatical year at Bosch Corporate Research in Renningen, Germany, working with Dirk Ziegenbein and Arne Hamann on the verification and validation of control systems in presence of deadline misses and computational faults.