Public Defense of Doctoral Thesis at the ETSi

Doctoral candidate Eva Masero Rubio will publicly defend her doctoral thesis entitled "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 doctoral thesis focuses on model predictive controller (MPC) clustering techniques, as these inherently guarantee optimality and stability when 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 simultaneously ensuring constraint compliance, recursive feasibility, and stability.

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

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 schemes of coalitional MPC, ii) the use of lightweight mechanisms and heuristics for coalitional control in order to avoid the combinatorial explosion of control topologies when dealing with numerous agents, and iii) the study of a robust strategy to guarantee feasibility and recursive stability despite variations in perturbations due to changes in the 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".

Doctoral candidate: Eva Masero Rubio

Directors: Eduardo Fernández Camacho and José María Maestre Torreblanca

Date: June 5

Time: 11:00 am.

Location : Professor Juan Larrañeta Room.