SMART SYSTEMS CONTROL

AND APPLICATIONS

Roberto Sacile
 System
n
o
i
s
e

Systems
control output
State Variables
 System
n
o
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Systems sensors
actuator control output
State Variables
 Networked control system
• A networked control systems is a system composed of physically distributed smart agents that can
sense the environment, act on it, and communicate with one other through a communication
network to achieve a common goal.
• Typical examples that fall into this class are Wireless Sensors and Actuators Networks (WSANs) for
environmental monitoring and control, multi-vehicle networks for coordinated exploration, camera
networks for surveillance, multi-camera coordinated motion capture, smart grids for energy
distribution and management, etc.. NCSs differ from more traditional control systems because of their
interdisciplinary which requires the convergence of control theory, communications, computer
science and software engineering.
• The challenges reside in the design of control systems that are robust to communication constraints
like bandwidth, random delay and packet loss, to computational constraints due to the large amount
of data to be processed or to the distributed nature of the sensing and control, to real-time
implementation on limited resources devices, an to complexity to the large number of possibly
unreliable agents involved.
 System of systems

System1 System2

System6
System4

System5
System3
 Smart system
• Smart systems incorporate functions of sensing, actuation, and
control in order to describe and analyze a situation, and make
decisions based on the available data in a predictive or
adaptive manner, thereby performing smart actions. In most
cases the “smartness” of the system can be attributed to
autonomous operation based on closed loop control, 
energy efficiency, and networking capabilities.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_system
 n
o
i Eg comfort or stress from abiotic factors,
s Brightness, temperature, external humidity
e

control output
Realized through I measure the state
actuators: eg open / close variables (only some of
window, heating with them, perhaps only
biomass, geothermal, etc. occasionally and only in
some areas) using sensors
 Sensors
• Regardless of their function (eg measuring humidity,
temperature), we can distinguish them in two categories
according to their mode of transmission to a computer
e c – Wired
a h – Wireless
s e
y • Wifi
a
p • gPRS
• IoT network by Sigfox (radio connection) (Sigfox is a French global network
operator founded in 2009 that builds wireless networks to connect low-
power objects such as electricity meters and smartwatches, which must
be constantly turned on and issue small amounts of data.)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigfox
 Why sensors?
• By placing sensors we can define a control law to establish
ideal conditions to improve the thermo-hygrometric comfort of
the plant and mitigate abiotic stress

• Problems:
How many sensors do you put?
Which sensors to put?
How often to acquire and transmit data
Control law
n
example: o Eg comfort or stress from
relay i
s
abiotic factors,
Brightness, temperature,
e external humidity

On/Off Ventilation opening

output
control
Temperature

T>35°
 n
Example of control law: o
i
proportional s
Eg comfort or stress from abiotic factors,
Brightness, temperature, external humidity
e

Ventilation opening
proportional to the
difference
output
Ref. T=35° +/- control
Temperature
 n
Example of control law: o Eg comfort or stress from
i
PID s
abiotic factors,
Brightness, temperature,
e external humidity
Ventilation opening
Proportional to the difference, to the cumulative
difference, and to the last difference of the
difference
Ref. T=35° +/- control output

Temperature
 Comment
• This type of control covers practically 99% of the controls currently
commercially available
• The previous controllers are of the feedback type
• The controls seen are reactive: I am not interested in the future
evolution of the system nor in the conditioning brought about by future
abiotic events such as weather evolution
• The controls seen are of the SISO type, Single Input Single Output
• If transformed into MIMO systems, Multiple Input Multiple Output, ie
for example if I want to control temperature and humidity, changing the
ventilation and using panels for shading, the adjustment becomes
complex
MPC (Modelling Predictive Control)
 MPC: requirements
• Short term prediction of weather evolution resulting from
models (external to MPC)
• Identification of the model of the greenhouse and its
calibration
• Optimization model to define the control law
• The set point could be defined in a variable way over time (and
in space) with some purpose
Short term prediction
 d
i

MPC
s
t
u
r
b
o

Model USMB-
UNIGE
External noise
 Challenges
- Definition of daily dynamic set point according to different
aspects such as productivity and energy saving
- Use of MPC in the control of greenhouses