Zoom Webinar (Register here)

What do self-driving cars, power grids, and homeostasis in biology have in common? Seemingly not much. If one looks “under the hood”, however, one discovers that they all rely on a common principle that renders their operation robust and reliable – feedback. The principle of feedback is intuitive: see where you are, compare this to where you want to be, and move in the direction that reduces the difference between the two. Though the principle itself is simple to explain, understanding its implications, uses and limitations is anything but and forms part of a branch of engineering known as automatic control. The talk will outline the main ideas of feedback, automation and control driven by examples of their use in biology, energy systems and beyond.

Lecturer
John LYGEROS (Invited Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo; Director, Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Commentator
ASAMA Hajime (Visiting Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo)

Moderator
OSHIMA Marie (Deputy Director, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo)