Smarter Cities: New Services, New Applications for Control

Monday, June 26, 2017 11:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Robert Shorten
Professor & Chair, Control Engineering & Decisions Science, University College Dublin

The automotive industry is probably experiencing its most disruptive period since the invention of the diesel engine. Driven by new technologies, advances in mathematics, increasingly stringent regulation, new and disruptive business models, changing consumer demands, as well as a desire to make our cities smarter, more efficient, and cleaner, automotive companies are searching for new ways to re-imagine their products. At the forefront of this innovation is the search for new Smart Mobility and Smart City services that can be delivered to and from vehicles, and the resulting partnerships between traditional automotive and other non-traditional automotive industries. Research questions arising in this context are driving exciting new activities in a number of disciplines. Among these, Control Theory has much to offer, and much to gain as a discipline, by embracing some of the questions that are of concern as planners and municipalities re-imagine our cities. In this talk, I will discuss several such applications. Topics to be covered include: energy management systems for hybrid vehicles; the design of electric charge points in the context of collaborative consumption (shared economy) models; and some new work on pedelecs. Partially distributed control algorithms will be presented and time permitting, several open challenges will be enunciated and the suitability of classical controllers discussed for smart city applications.