Public Defense of Doctoral Thesis at the ETSi

Doctoral student Eva Masero Rubio will publicly defend her doctoral thesis titled "Coalitional Model Predictive Control: Optimization, Heuristics, and Robustness", which has been directed by professors Eduardo Fernández Camacho and José María Maestre Torreblanca , from the Department of Systems and Automation of the Higher Technical School of Engineering of the University of Seville.

This PhD thesis focuses on Model Predictive Controller (MPC) clustering techniques as it has the inherent ability to ensure optimality and stability by handling constraints on control inputs and system states. . These controllers are considered agents that collaborate to manage different parts of a system, taking into account interactions between subsystems and varying operating conditions, while ensuring constraint compliance, recursive feasibility, and stability.

First, the main challenges of large-scale distributed systems are presented, we review the control methods existing in the literature, we introduce the main objectives of this thesis and we also list the articles that comprise it.

Secondly, the contributions and results obtained in the articles are presented, which can be classified into three main themes: i) the optimization of the cooperation topology in hierarchical coalitional MPC schemes, ii) the use of lightweight and heuristic mechanisms. for coalitional control to avoid combinatorial explosion of control topologies when dealing with numerous agents, and iii) the study of a robust strategy to ensure feasibility and recursive stability despite variations in perturbations due to changes in control topology and plug-and-play operations. Finally, the main conclusions of the doctoral thesis and possible lines of future research are presented.

Title: "Coalitional Model Predictive Control: Optimization, Heuristics, and Robustness".

PhD student: Eva Masero Rubio

Director: Eduardo Fernández Camacho and José María Maestre Torreblanca

Date: June 5

Time: 11:00 am.

Place : Professor Juan Larrañeta Room.