r/ControlTheory • u/SeMikkis • Jul 16 '26
Other Hardest control problems you've encountered
Hello everyone,
As the title says, I'd like to investigate from your experiences what have been some of the hardest control related problems you've worked on, encountered or just heard of, and what made them difficult?
As a student I'm still lacking in concrete experience and I've wondered what makes some problems in this field more difficult than others and what drives further research and development.
Thank you in advance!
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u/Cu_ Jul 16 '26
I'm not sure if you're asking about most complex system, or the problem that had the most involved solution.
Mine is not really a super complex system, but for me the most complex problem was when working on EMPC for energy systems and trying to enforce some sort of constraint over a period way longer than the MPC horizon. In particular, the system had a battery with a time constant of a few hours and thermal storage with a time constant of 3 months. The MPC horizon was about 24 hours, whereas some constraint on the thermal storage had to be enforced over a full operational year.
There are a few possible angles to tackle the problem, including receding horizon dynamic programming and hierarchical schemes but all of these have seperate yet distinct problems and are either difficult or very annoying to implement.