Date: 10.02.2023

Time: 15:00 CET (Central European Time)

Title of the Talk: Guaranteed data-driven representations of dynamical control systems

Speaker: Dr. Adnane SAOUD (Associate Professor at CentraleSupelec, University Paris-Saclay, France)

Event  Link: Zoom

Abstract: In the last few years, learning-based techniques have shown a great success to control complex cyber-physical systems (CPS), where learning-based tools are used to provide mathematical models of a system, based on which one can synthesize a controller. However, the use of learning-based techniques in the context of safety critical CPS is particularly problematic, since learning-based components are typically viewed as black box-type systems, lacking formal guarantees. In this talk, we first recall how symbolic control techniques can be used in the context of the control of CPS. Then, we focus on how to provide guarantees when learning is used at the model’s level, namely we show how to learn a symbolic model from data, while providing formal guarantees. This symbolic model will be then used to construct the controller for complex specifications, such as linear temporal logics, based on existing tools in the formal methods community.

Biography of the Speaker: Adnane SAOUD is an Associate Professor (Maitre de conférences) at CentraleSupelec, University Paris-Saclay, France, and an Affiliate Professor at the School of Computer Science at Mohammed VI Polytechnical University, Benguerir, Morocco. Between January and August 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Between January and December 2020, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received the Ph.D. degree in Control from CentraleSupelec, France, in 2019. In 2018, he was selected as one of the top three finalists for the Best student paper award at the European Control Conference, ECC. In 2020, he was selected as a finalist of the French national Best PhD award Discerned by the GdR MACS. In 2021, he was selected as one of the top three finalists of the EECI PhD award, recompensing the best PhD work in Europe in the field of Control. He obtained the M.Sc. degree in control from CentraleSupelec, France, in 2016, and Electrical Engineering degree from Ecole Mohammadia d’ingénieurs, (EMI), Morocco, in 2014. His current research interests include formal methods for Cyber-Physical systems, learning-based control, adaptive control and compositional analysis and synthesis of interconnected systems.