Current trends and future directions in event-based control

TL;DR

This paper reviews current research trends in event-based control, highlighting its benefits, fundamental questions, and future research directions, especially in resource-constrained systems like networked control.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent developments in event-based control and identifies key open questions and future research directions.

Findings

Event-based control reduces resource usage compared to periodic control.

Fundamental questions about stability and performance remain open.

The review highlights growing research interest and future challenges.

Abstract

The defining characteristic of event-based control is that feedback loops are only closed when indicated by a triggering condition that takes recent information about the system into account. This stands in contrast to periodic control where the feedback loop is closed periodically. Benefits of event-based control arise when sampling comes at a cost, which occurs, e.g., for Networked Control Systems or in other setups with resource constraints. A rapidly growing number of publications deals with event-based control. Nevertheless, some fundamental questions about event-based control are still unsolved. In this article, we provide an overview of current research trends in event-based control. We focus on results that aim for a better understanding of effects that occur in feedback loops with event-based control. Based on this summary, we identify important open directions for future research.