LANS Seminar

Seminar Title: A critical context for data-driven feedback control

Speaker: Robert Bitmead, Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego

Date: Thursday, September 18, 2025

Time: 2:30 PM-3:30 PM (In-Person)

Location: Hybrid, Bldg. 240, Conference Room 4301

Host: Mohammad Ramadan

Description: Data-driven methodologies, in which all that apparently matters is the availability of quantities of operational data, are an appealing prospect touted as the shining path forward in engineering unencumbered by modeling requirements and other physical mundanities. In this talk, we consider the role of other information and externalities in using data to wind up with a functioning feedback controller. Of specific note are: the control aim, prior knowledge about the target system, the appetite for failure of the design, the suitability of the available data for the control purpose. Excursions will be made into deductive and inductive logic and their role in the philosophy of science and engineering, then specifically control. To temper these heady ideas, examples with commercial impact will be briefly presented, with the objective of helping to tease out ideas of when data-focused methods might, or might not, be appropriate. Keeping in mind prospects for commercial impact helps to temper unbridled enthusiasm.

Bio: Bob Bitmead is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego; he retired about one year ago. He has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. He regards himself as a control theorist and has a long engagement with many industry sectors, particularly in US and in his native Australia. He was awarded the 2014 ASME Rufus Oldenburger Medal, the 2015 IEEE Control Systems Society Transition to Practice Award and a 2024 Humboldt Research Award. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Federation of Automatic Control, and of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering. He was President of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2019 and inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the IFAC Journal of Systems & Control from 2017-2022. He is an accredited Australian Rules Football umpire and brews beer.

 Please note that the meeting URL for this event can be seen on the cels-seminars website which requires an Argonne login.