IEEE SMC Beijing Capital Region Chapter Seminar by Assistant Professor Yao Zhang of Northumbria University

On the afternoon of June 9, at the invitation of Professor Zhijie Liu, Assistant Professor Yao Zhang, gave an academic presentation entitled " Model predictive control and robust linear optimal control for wave energy converters with inaccurate prediction " through Tencent Conference. The lecture was hosted by Zhijie Liu. Faculty members and more than 50 doctoral and master's degree students attended the lecture.

During the presentation, Assistant Professor Yao Zhang shared her experience in wave energy converters control. To maximize energy conversion in real scenario, three issues was introduced: (a) the existing wave prediction methods inevitably introduce prediction errors, which degrades the control performance; (b) the model mismatch between the linearized state-space model and the hydrodynamic model also affects the control performance; (c) as a non-causal optimal control problem, the performance of wave energy converter (WEC) control relies on the accuracy of the future incoming wave prediction. However, the inevitable prediction errors can degrade WEC performance dramatically especially when a long prediction horizon is needed by a WEC non-causal optimal controller. To tackle these issues, this report presented a novel non-causal linear optimal control with adaptive sliding mode observer (NLOC+ASMO) scheme, which can effectively mitigate the control performance degradation caused by wave prediction errors. The proposed NLOC+ASMO scheme does not cause heavy computational load enabling its real-time implementation on standard computational hardware, which is especially critical for the control of WECs with complicated dynamics. Theoretical proof and simulation results show that the proposed controller is robust to achieve the maximal energy output subject to inaccurate prediction and inaccurate control-oriented model.

During the question-and-answer session, the teachers and students of the School of Automation actively asked questions, and Assistant Professor Yao Zhang answered them one by one. In this lecture, Assistant Professor Yao Zhang had a cordial academic exchange with the teachers and students. Based on her research results and practical experience, she explained the wave energy converter and its optimization control problems in detail to the teachers and students of the School of Automation, so that the teachers and students had a further understanding of the wave energy converters, model predictive control and other cutting-edge issues in the control field. Finally, the report will be completed in the thunderous applause of all the teachers and students.

Brief introduction of the presenter:

Dr. Yao Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Northumbria University. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Control Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Before joining Northumbria University, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London from 2018 to 2020. Her research interests include robust model predictive control, sliding mode control and observation, learning-based control, and control applications to deep space exploration, wave energy, and marine engineering. She has published more than 20 journal papers, including IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, and 5 conference papers, including IFAC 2020, ACC 2019. She is a member of IEEE and the local event coordinator in IEEE Control Systems Committee (the United Kingdom and Republic Ireland Chapter).