The Control Problem: A Framework for A Holistic Design

Traditionally the control problem has been tackled from a reductionist point of view. The complex whole problem has been divided in smaller more manageable subproblems (e.g. model identification, control structure selection, control design, etc). However this presents several problems: i) issues arising from the interrelation between subproblems of the reductionist approach are neglected, ii) recent advances in identification for control have arisen the necessity of tackling the identification and control design in an unified approach, iii) in order to design automatic supervisors high level issues must be considered. Consequently we face the holistic control design problem. First the elements of the problem are defined and their relations established. Secondly we proposed a new scheme for dynamic management of information flow of the control design problem. It provides a structured approach to consider all the important aspects of the control design. It is suited for automatic supervisory schemes design