Exploring the Frontiers of Model Predictive Control - Professor Frank Allgöwer

13th Harry Nicholson Lecture in Control Engineering - Professor Frank Allgöwer, Director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control, University of Stuttgart

Wednesday 25 September 2025

Abstract

Recent years have shown rapid progress of learning-based and data-driven methods, significantly impacting the field of control, including model predictive control (MPC). In addition to numerous methodological and computational advancements, a substantial number of application studies featuring data- and learning-based MPC are currently being published. In this talk, we will compare model-based and data-based MPC to explore which holds more potential for future impact.  Highlighting recent developments, we will focus on two different data-based MPC schemes: one based on the Fundamental Lemma of Willems et al., and the other on the data-informativity paradigm. By providing an overview and introduction to these methods, we will discuss their theoretical properties, suitability for nonlinear systems, and demonstrate their advantages and limitations compared to model-based MPC through various application examples. This critical analysis and comparison aims to offer insights and recommendations for future research directions in the evolving domain of MPC.