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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).

Congratulations to NCCR members Kaveh Razavi, Michele Marazzi and Melanie Zeilinger who, along with their teams, have been presented with "Golden Owl" awards for innovative teaching by the student association of ETH Zurich.

NCCR Automation is opening its first call for research projects in collaboration with industry partners.

Congratulations to PhD student Bahar Taskesen who has won the informs Optimization Society Student Paper Prize for her paper "Semi-Discrete Optimal Transport: Hardness, Regularization, and Numerical Solution".

Researchers of the NCCR Automation work together with partners from industry to contribute to a successful transition to a sustainable energy system.

Researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, ETH Zurich and Empa have developed novel control strategies for heating systems in buildings. In tests under real life settings, they managed to reduce energy use for heating by up to 49 percent.

We are happy to welcome three new PIs to NCCR Automation.

Last year, researchers discovered vulnerabilities in commonly used memory devices that potentially put users of any kind of computer at risk. So far, the efforts of vendors to implement security mechanisms inside the chips have been unsuccessful. Scientists of ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation have now developed a mechanism by which the security risks are mitigated.

In this episode, our guest is Alessandro Chiuso. Alessandro is a Professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padova. The episode covers several topics, including Alessandro’s research trajectory, his work in system identification and vision, and his passion for skiing.

ETH Zurich and NCCR Automation researchers have discovered a serious security vulnerability in computer hardware. The vulnerability, called "Retbleed," affects microprocessors from market leaders Intel and AMD. All commercially available operating systems worldwide that use these processors are affected. When computers execute special calculation steps to compute faster, they leave traces that hackers could abuse.

La conduite autonome reste un défi majeur pour la recherche en automation et en contrôle. Les membres du Pôle de Recherche National (PRN) Automation travaillent sur des approches innovantes pour résoudre certains aspects de ce défi.

Depuis des années, on constate un déséquilibre dans les universités suisses : les étudiants sont comparativement moins intéressés par les mathématiques, l'informatique, les disciplines techniques et les sciences naturelles que par les sciences humaines et sociales. Divers efforts ont été déployés pour contrer cette évolution. Les membres du Pôle de Recherche National (PRN) Automation y contribuent également, en se rendant par exemple dans les écoles pour présenter aux élèves leurs thèmes de recherche et éveiller leur fascination pour ceux-ci.

L'adaptation à des conditions inattendues est difficile pour les algorithmes. Ni les approches classiques basées sur des modèles ni les méthodes modernes d'apprentissage automatique qui s'appuient sur des données n'offrent de solution convaincante. Les membres du Pôle de recherche national (PRN) Automation proposent donc de combiner le meilleur des deux.

Fin juin, les membres du Pôle de Recherche National (PRN) Automation se sont réunis à Caux pour leur retraite annuelle. Surpomblant le lac Léman, les participants des sept institutions ont profité de ce moment pour planifier l'avenir du PRN, élaborer des programmes de formation et prendre des nouvelles de chacun après l'événement virtuel de l'année dernière.