Brief Industry Paper: Delay-Aware Control in Networked Systems Using Smart Actuators

The control applications of the future will increasingly rely on edge and cloud services to access enhanced computational resources, boosting efficiency and optimizing performance. Such networked systems are however sensitive to variable delays, which are inevitably introduced by the communication between the plant and the remote controller. To increase reliability, we present a delay-aware control design, based on the execution of multiple control modes optimized for different latency conditions, paired with a smart actuator that measures the control chain delay at runtime. The delay information is used by the actuator to select the best suited control input for the current delay, resulting in a higher performance of the control application. Additionally, the measured delay can be used in feedback to adjust the controller configuration for the subsequent iterations.