Research
The Department of Automatic Control is one of the departments at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) at Lund University. Our research is focused on the sustainable and safe operation of technical systems to the benefit of people and the planet.
Researchers at our department contribute to a majority of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations' website). We also contribute to the five core research areas defined by LTH (lth.se), meaning that our research is important in digitalization, industry, the built environment, our climate, and life itself.
We pursue both fundamental research and research on a variety of applications, ranging from those in more traditional technological fields, such as robotics, energy supply, and transportation, to less obvious ones, such as health care, communications, and economics. Automatic control, mathematics, and computer science form the core of all our research.
Together, we produce more than 100 scientific articles, four or five PhD dissertations, and a few dozen Master’s theses every year.
Applications of our research
The YouTube videos below give an impression of the applications of our research.
Explore our research, teaching, and activities – @ControlLund on YouTube
Our focus areas
Large-Scale Systems and Learning
What do traffic networks, wind farms, Facebook and economic markets have in common? They are all large-scale networked systems, which can be analyzed and optimized using automatic control techniques. By developing scalable methods for control and optimization, researchers at the Department of Automatic Control are contributing to solving one of the greatest challenges in modern engineering – the sustainable and safe operation of these large-scale systems.
Autonomous Real-Time Systems
Considering Ericsson’s forecast that 47 billion devices will be connected to the Internet in 2030, 22 billion being IoT (Internet of Things) devices, and the emergence of the Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0/5.0, researchers in Autonomous Real-Time Systems will be kept very busy. Their vision? -- To create user-friendly, self-adaptive, resilient, high-performing systems, with low latency and jitter, while being cost-effective.
Innovative Control Applications
This is an area of application-driven research motivated by the desire to create a more sustainable society. It addresses several of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, in particular numbers 3, 4, 9, and 12: Good Health and Well-Being, Quality Education, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and Responsible Consumption and Production. It also has an impact on LTH’s five core research areas, meaning that this field of research is important in digitalization, industry, the built environment, our climate, and life itself.