Keynote

When Should Control Act? Event-Based Feedback for Resource-Aware Real-Time Systems

Frank Allgöwer

University of Stuttgart, Germany

Friday, December 11, 2026, 9:00–10:30

Abstract

In conventional control systems, sensing, computation, communication, and actuation are commonly organized around a fixed clock: actions are taken at every sampling instant, whether or not anything meaningful has changed. In intelligent, interconnected, and resource-constrained cyber-physical systems, this rigid periodicity can waste communication bandwidth, energy, computation, and network capacity.

Event-triggered and self-triggered control propose a complementary paradigm: close the feedback loop only when necessary. Instead of time alone determining when control actions occur, the state and evolution of the physical system drive computation and communication. This creates an opportunity for real-time systems and control theory to be designed together: control requirements define when resources are needed, while timing, scheduling, and communication constraints determine which guarantees can be delivered.

This talk will introduce the foundations of event-based control and discuss how triggering mechanisms can balance control quality against resource usage. Particular emphasis will be placed on systematic analysis and design frameworks that provide guarantees for stability, constraint satisfaction, and performance under resource limitations. We will examine the resulting questions for real-time computation and networking: How can event-driven control tasks be scheduled and analyzed? What timing and communication guarantees are required to preserve closed-loop performance? How can control, scheduling, network management, and sensing be co-designed rather than treated as separate layers? The talk will also connect event-based control to newer developments in neuromorphic control.

Ultimately, event-based control invites us to rethink the classical separation between physical dynamics, control algorithms, scheduling, and communication—toward real-time cyber-physical systems in which every computation and message is justified by its contribution to closed-loop behavior.

Bio

Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and professor in the mechanical engineering department there. His current research interests are to develop new methods for data-based control, optimization-based control and networked control. Frank has published over 500 well-cited papers and received several recognitions for his work including the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, fellowships from IFAC, the European and the Asian Control Associations, the State Teaching Award of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Frank has been the President of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for the years 2017-2020. He was Editor for the flagship control journal Automatica from 2001 to 2015 and is editor for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Science book series. From 2012 until 2020, Frank also served as Vice-President of Germany’s most important research funding agency, the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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