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The Third Champéry Power Conference on 4-9 February 2024 is organized by the Institute of Sustainable Energy at the School of Engineering of Valais and the Automatic Control Laboratory of the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. NCCR Automation are proud to sponsor this event.

In the last week of September we welcomed 80 people to the NCCR Symposium on Complex Interconnected Systems and decision making in measure spaces. This is how it went...

The distinction between “convex” or “non-convex” optimization isn’t just a technicality. Convexity makes for calculations that can guarantee the best result in an automated process – here’s how.

Thank you to Control Systems Magazine who featured NCCR Automation as their Institute in Control.

Les solutions courantes de réduction du trafic routier ont un problème : elles sont intrinsèquement injustes. Le fait de faire payer l'accès déplace la charge de la congestion vers ceux qui sont moins en mesure de la payer. Nos chercheurs ont peut-être trouvé un moyen de contourner ce problème.

Each year, NCCR Automation works with a number of our sister NCCRs to put on the bench2biz event, a two week workshop for pre-seed research ideas. Each year, carefully curated experts are invited to join to give advice and feedback, and as this initiative is run through the NCCRs, the organisers can give personalized, tailored feedback and coaching.

For 2022’s edition, NCCR Automation member Manos Barmpounakis took part and was coached by KTT officer Ben Sawicki. We asked Manos for his thoughts on the experience.

Apply by the end of September to spend a period of up to six months in an NCCR Automation lab.

Le mathématicien Yurii Nesterov est l'un des principaux acteurs dans le domaine de l'optimisation convexe, qui est cruciale pour de nombreuses applications dans le domaine de l'automation. Grâce en partie à ses découvertes, ce domaine s'étend à de nombreuses autres disciplines. Il n'en est pas aussi satisfait qu'on pourrait le penser.

Humans have been trying to do more with less for a very long time. We’d like cars and planes that go further but use less fuel and have a smaller carbon footprint. We’d like food that is optimally nutritious but also affordable, and we’d like energy solutions for our house, cities and countries that are effective but also green and affordable.

The jury gave the following motivation: "The paper is being recognized for making a timely contribution to address noise-corrupted datasets in data-driven modeling and control through a principled statistical approach. The paper stands out for its completeness and high-impact potential in applications including predictive control and system identification".

Dans un paysage énergétique en pleine mutation, la flexibilité apparaît comme un nouveau marché. Mais comment l'échanger correctement quand tant de choses sont incertaines ? Julie Rousseau crée un modèle qui tient compte des complexités de la vie réelle.

Congratulations to Varsha Behrunani for winning best poster award at the DTU PES summer school: Advances in OR and AI

Preparations for this year's RoboCup, which will take place in Bordeaux, France, are in full swing. This international robot soccer tournament brings together student teams from different countries to compete in 7-on-7 matches. In addition to the competition, RoboCup also serves as a robotics conference.

Many congratulations to Baiwei Guo for winning Best PhD Paper Award at ECC23.

Alors que les possibilités d'applications de l'internet des objets se multiplient, leur croissance est freinée par des problèmes d'énergie. L'une des stratégies consiste à récolter de l'énergie, mais cela s'accompagne de limitations fondamentales. Naomi Stricker travaille sur des solutions.

We hosted 100 people at ETH's conference centre in Monte Verita, Ticino, and what a week we had!

Alors que les pays du monde entier sont menacés de pénurie d'énergie, les chercheurs de l'ETH Zurich et du PRN Automation ont développé une solution logicielle à fort impact et à faible coût pour améliorer la résilience et l'efficacité du réseau énergétique. Cette approche innovante permet aux fournisseurs de tirer le meilleur parti des ressources énergétiques décentralisées telles que les systèmes photovoltaïques grâce à un fonctionnement flexible, réactif et axé sur les données.

Si les réseaux neuronaux atteignent souvent des performances impressionnantes, ils ne parviennent pas toujours à saisir des concepts simples que les humains comprennent intuitivement - une lacune qui peut même mettre des vies en danger. Mais pouvons-nous transférer nos connaissances humaines aux réseaux neuronaux pour les aider à apprendre des solutions plus significatives ? Loris Di Natale, chercheur au PRN Automation, a un plan pour s'assurer que les machines automatisées ne nous excluent pas.

Julie Rousseau is a PhD student at ETH Zurich and Empa looking at stabilising the energy grid.

Anna Scampicchio is a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich who does theoretical research on why some systems behave the way they do.

Rahel Rickenbach is a PhD student at the Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control, at ETH Zurich.

Jelena Trisovic is a Ph.D. student at the ETH AI Center, she obtained an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zürich and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computing from the University of Belgrade.

Alisa Rupenyan is a senior scientist at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich and Head of the Advanced Control and IoT group at Inspire, the technology transfer organization at ETH Zurich. She leads research projects in the intersection between process optimization, industrial control, and machine learning for applications strongly connected to manufacturing.

Clara Galimberti is a PhD student at EPFL. She received her degree in Electronic Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR), Argentina, in 2018. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning and control theory.

Maryam Kamgarpour leads the Sycamore lab at EPFL. Her theoretical research is motivated by control challenges arising in intelligent transportation networks, robotics, power grid systems and healthcare.

We are thrilled to announce that after a highly competitive round of financing calls for industry-academia projects, NCCR Automation has invested CHF 2.1 million in research into ten new, collaborative research projects. Projects will be hosted within an NCCR Automation lab and will continue with this funding for approximately two years, before being spun out in other formats.

Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Silvia Mastellone who has been elected the board of governors of the IEEE Control System Society.

Loris Di Natale and Muhammad Zakwan are the perfect example of the interdisciplinarity fostered within NCCR Automation. They met during a project meeting and, after many months of exchange dedicated two full weeks of their time to drive their idea forward and to publish a paper. Several extensions of the initial idea are in the works so stay tuned for updates!

This time Alberto Padoan chats with Anuradha Annaswamy (MIT) about Adaptive Control and its exciting history, starting from the Brave Era to the audacious X15 tests and to modern intersections with RL.

Congratulations to NCCR PI Vasco Medici and his team for winning the Watt d'Or 2023 for their three year project that successfully demonstrated that an intelligently networked and controlled combination of electricity consumers and solar power producers can significantly increase self-sufficiency.

The NCCR members Luca Furieri and Maryam Kamgarpour have won the 2022 Best Paper Award in the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems for the paper "Sparsity Invariance for Convex Design of Distributed Controllers" by Luca Furieri, Yang Zheng, Antonis Papachristodoulou and Maryam Kamgarpour.

Congratulations to our PI Srdjan Capkun who has just been named IEEE Fellow for his contributions to wireless and systems security

In today's episode of the InControl podcast host Alberto Padoan talks to Jean-Jacques Slotine (Director of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory at MIT and Distinguished Faculty at Google AI) about his inspiring journey through nonlinear and adaptive control, complex networks, optimization and machine learning

NCCR Automation provides junior researchers with the means for funding activities related to research or NCCR structure-related activities (Communication, Education, Equal Opportunity and KTT).