The study of feedback control is arguably
the most influential of engineering disciplines. Autonomous driving, spacecraft
pointing, power systems regulation and
modern cancer radiation therapy all hinge
on the ability of a control system to robustly and reliably regulate system behaviour. Despite its diverse areas of application, the desire to optimize performance
and guarantee acceptable behaviour in
the face of inevitable uncertainty is pervasive throughout control theory. This
creates a fundamental challenge since
the necessity of robustly stable control
schemes often favors conservative designs, while the desire to optimize performance typically demands the opposite.
This talk will discuss how a return to
one of the foundational results of inputoutput stability theory, George Zames’
Conic Sector Theorem, can lead to new
design methods that aid in solving problems related to communication and scale
of networked control systems.