Machine learning in process systems engineering: Challenges and opportunities

This “white paper” is a concise perspective of the potential of machine learning in the process systems engineering (PSE) domain, based on a session during FIPSE 5, held in Crete, Greece, June 27–29, 2022. The session included two invited talks and three short contributed presentations followed by extensive discussions. This paper does not...

Model and Control of R-Soft Inverted Pendulum

Soft robots enable safe and robust operations in unstructured environments. However, the nonlinearities of their continuum structure complicate the accomplishment of classic robotic tasks, such as pick and place. In this work, we propose the R-Soft Inverted Pendulum, a Soft Inverted Pendulum (SIP) actuated only by a revolute joint at the base...

Field Model Identification and Control of a Mobile Electromagnet for Remote Actuation of Soft Robots

The actuation of miniaturized robots through external magnetic fields has great potential for medical applications. The controllability properties of the miniaturized robots are affected by magnetic field generation modality. In this work, the magnetic field of a mobile electromagnet, notably capable to generate a desired magnetic field in...

Experimental Closed-Loop Excitation of Nonlinear Normal Modes on an Elastic Industrial Robot

Adding elastic elements to the mechanical structure should enable robots to perform efficient oscillatory tasks. Still, even characterizing natural oscillations in nonlinear systems is a challenge in itself, which nonlinear modal theory promises to solve. Therein eigenmanifolds generalize eigenspaces to mechanical systems with non-Euclidean...

A One-step Approach for Centralized Overactuated Motion Control of a Prototype Reticle Stage

Next-generation motion stages are envisaged to be lightweight to meet stringent demands regarding accuracy and throughput. The lightweight stage design implies flexible dynamical behavior, which is foreseen to be severely excited due to increasing acceleration forces. The aim of this paper is to exploit additional actuators and sensors to...

Feedback Regulation of Elastically Decoupled Underactuated Soft Robots

The intrinsically underactuated and nonlinear nature of continuum soft robots makes the derivation of provably stable feedback control laws a challenging task. Most of the works so far circumvented the issue either by looking at coarse fully-actuated approximations of the dynamics or by imposing quasi-static assumptions. In this letter, we...

A 1-dimensional continuous and smooth model for thermally stratified storage tanks including mixing and buoyancy

To mitigate the effects of the intermittent generation of renewable energy sources, reliable and efficient energy storage is critical. Since nearly 80% of households energy consumption is destined to water and space heating, thermal energy storage is particularly important. In this context, we propose and validate a new model for one of the...

Model Order Reduction for Managed Pressure Drilling Systems based on a model with local nonlinearities

Automated Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) is a method for fast and accurate pressure control in drilling operations. The achievable performance of automated MPD is limited, firstly, by the control system and, secondly, by the hydraulics model based on which this control system is designed. Hence, an accurate hydraulics model is needed that,...