Maurice Heemels

Maurice Heemels is a Full professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Chair of Hybrid and Networked Systems. His research is oriented towards general system and control theory with an emphasis on the development of multi-disciplinary design techniques, across a number of areas including hybrid systems, networked control, resource-aware (event-triggered) control, constrained control including model predictive control (MPC) and cyber-physical systems.

Cyber-physical systems bridge the ‘cyber’ (computation, communication and control) world and the physical world (heating, cooling, motion, vibration...) in next generation high-tech professional systems for applications such as image-based therapies, lithography, and electron microscopy. The mathematical modelling of these CPS require the combination of diverse models from different fields and often lead to hybrid sysems  that exhibit both discrete and continuous dynamics (e.g., the combination of finite state machines/automato/communication models on the one hand and difference or differential equations on the other hand). The creation of analysis techniques for hybrid systems and accompanying design tools for CPS of the future is at the heart of Maurice's interests.

Particular design questions are:

• How to conceive resource-aware control strategies moving away from time-triggered controller operation, thereby only using valuable system's resources as computation power and communication bandwidth, when is actually needed to o guarantee closed-loop stability, safety and performance properties? This calls for a paradigm shift in which time-triggered periodic controllers are replaced by asynchronous event-triggered control schemes that only compute or communicate when it is really necessary. Applications include cooperative and automated driving (CACC)
• How to design (wireless) networked control systems connecting sensors, controllers, and actuators over shared media with bandwidth-limitaitons? Applications are diverse ranging from manufacturing plants, to cooperating drones and robots, precision agriculture, etc.
• What switching or hybrid controllers can overcome the limitations of linear time-invariant controllers, as are classicaly used, to meet increasing throughput and accuracy demands in motion control and mechatronic systems? Various innovative strategies are being proposed, including HIGS (hybrid integrator-gain systems), reset controllers, variable-gain controllers, SPANI-filters, etc. 
• What are excellent design tools for MPC or other constrained control systems that are computionally feasible, stable, and high-performant while taking care of constraints on control inputs and plant outputs? Our MPC work is exploited in diverse application domains including local hyperthermia for improving the efficacy of cancer treatments, precision agriculture to feed the world in the future and thermal-mechanical problems in lithography machines (in order to sustain Moore's law).