This work package brings together experts in automatic control, optimization and materials engineering to offer a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary research collaboration in these domains. The work package targets fundamental advances in methods and the underlying theories as well as a rapid transfer of results to practice.

WP Leader: Milan Korda

Research Areas (RA) / Research Objectives (RO)

Lead: Tomáš Vyhlídal
RA1 will develop control design tools for complex systems, including distributed-parameter and time-varying systems, and embed them in industry-ready low-complexity controllers and estimators. The methods developed will be applied to simultaneous motion control and vibration suppression of robotic structures, with applications in (micro)machining and laser-based additive manufacturing.

Lead: Michael Šebek
RA2 will develop new model-based and data-driven automatic control methods for modular systems, structures, and materials. The primary focus will be on exploiting knowledge of interconnection structure as the enabling step for developing scalable, control-oriented modelling, simulation and analysis, as well as distributed and collaborative control, including hardware implementation. The target applications involve the coordination of multiple assembly machines and robots, as well as self-assembly processes.

Lead: Didier Henrion
RA3 is the WP’s theoretical backbone; it will develop methods for solving nonlinear and nonconvex optimization problems from materials engineering through a hierarchy of convex relaxations. It will guarantee the convergence of the hierarchy as well as ensure its scalability to industrial-size problems by exploiting the structure (sparsity, symmetry) inherent to these problems.

Lead: Jan Zeman
RA4 exploits modularity as the game-changing paradigm for distributed manufacturing of mass-customized products. As this modular-material framework is still in its infancy, novel theoretically supported algorithms and tools will be developed, exploiting modularity in simulating, optimizing and automated manufacturing.

Lead: Tomáš Polcar
RA5 aims at energy savings and cost reduction in materials engineering. This will be achieved by automated tribological testing, speeding up the development of new, ultra-low friction, materials; by the design and manipulation of 2D materials, paving the way toward the industrial use of solid superlubric materials; and by magnetron sputtering using a robotic arm for local deposition of thin films on large objects, reducing production time and material waste.