SSSC07 - Paper 238 Abstract

International Federation of Automatic Control
3rd IFAC SYMPOSIUM on SYSTEM, STRUCTURE and CONTROL

Foz do Iguassu, Brazil October 17^th - 19^th, 2007

Friday Morning

Plenary Lecture on Structured Evolving Systems Chair: João Manoel Gomes da Silva Jr. - Brazil Room: Pacifico 2007-10-19 From 08:30 to 09:30
	Structure Evolving Systems in Integrated System Design Nicos Karcanias Contact: Nicos Karcanias - United Kingdom

	Abstract:
	Existing methods in Systems and Control deal predominantly with Fixed Systems, that have been designed in the past, and for which the control design has to be performed. The new paradigm of Structure Evolving Systems (SES), expresses a new form of system complexity where the components, interconnection topology, measurement-actuation schemes may not be fixed, the control scheme also may vary within the system-lifecycle and different views of the system of varying complexity may be required by the designer. Such systems emerge in many application domains and in the engineering context in problems such as integrated system design, integrated operations, re-engineering, lifecycle design issues, networks etc. The paper focuses on the Integrated System Design (ISD) and introduces new generic clusters of system structure evolution, which include cases such as: (i) Time dependent evolution of system models from “early” to “late” stages of design. (ii) Design stage dependent evolution from conceptualisation to process synthesis and to overall instrumentation. (iii) Re-design of given systems and constrained system evolution. Within each cluster a number of well defined new Control Theory problems are introduced, which may be studied within the structural methodologies framework of Linear Systems. These problems have a general systems character, but the emphasis here is on Linear Systems and an overview of relevant results is given. This paper aims to motivate and define the Structural Control Theoretic context of an important family of complex systems emerging in engineering design and thus define a new research agenda for structural methods of Control Theory. Copyright © 2007 IFAC.

	N. Karcanias received the Diploma in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, with specialisation in Electrical, from the National Technical University of Athens in 1972 and the M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Control Engineering from UMIST, England in 1973 and 1976 respectively and the DSc from City University in 1990. During the period 1974 to 1980 he has carried out research in the Control and Management Systems Group of the University of Cambridge as a Research Assistant and then Research Fellow. In 1980 he joined the Department of Systems Science of City University as a Lecturer and then joined the Electrical Engineering Department of the same university where he was promoted to a personal chair in 1993 as Professor of Control Theory and Design. He is now Associate Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. And he is Director of the Control Engineering Centre and the Interdisciplinary Centre on Systems and Modeling. The main drive of his current research is the development of systems and control for complex systems, by developing the theory required for the new systems paradigm of ``structure evolving systems''. His research interests include Linear Systems, Mathematical Systems Theory, Control Theory and Design, Algebraic Computations, Modeling, Mathematical Methods for Control, Systems Theory of Measurement, Systems and Control to Complex Systems Problems emerging in engineering, such as Integrated Systems Design, Supply Chain Management etc and History of Systems and Control. He has been the author/co-author of over two hundred scientific publications, the holder of a number of research grants including eight major EU grants and supervisor of twenty completed PhD thesis. He is Fellow of IEE, IMA and senior member of IEEE. He is editor of IMA Journal of Mathematical Control and Information (OUP) and serves on the editorial Board of a number of Journals and Conferences.