EVENFLOW project partner Fatos Gashi of DFKI – The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence showcased its research at the 32nd Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED’24), held from 11 to 14 June 2024, in the city of Chania, Crete in Greece. On 14 June 2024, Mr. Gashi, use case lead at EVENFLOW, presented the paper titled Model Predictive Control Based Reference Generation for Optimal Proportional Integral Derivative Control.

Abstract— We introduce an alternative approach towards optimal proportional integral derivative (PID) control, con- sisting of model predictive control (MPC) based reference generation. To this end, we have integrated the reference as part of optimisation variables of the resulting problem, where a deliberate sequence of errors is induced to obtain an optimal PID control action. In addition, the desired behavior of the PID controller is achieved without the need for internal modification of the PID gains. To better highlight the ability of coping with poor PID tuning, several test cases consisting of progressively degraded PID gains are presented. Validation of the proposed strategy is displayed by comprehensive simulations using two different plants.

About MED 2024: MED 2024 extended across four full days, and it was organised under the auspices of the Technical University of Crete. On June 11, the focus was on Tutorials and Workshops, while the subsequent three days, June 12-14, comprised the technical conference. Aligning with the current trend of merging control and systems theory with hardware/software and communication technologies, the conference explored advancements in robotics and unmanned systems, autonomous systems, mechatronics, cyber-physical systems, and network-controlled systems. These topics of interest aimed to foster collaboration between control and automation scientists and industry professionals.