What’s Adaptive Control?

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Adaptive control is an approach to controlling systems that adapts over time in response to changing conditions and the knowledge gained by the controller. Rather than remaining static or trying to cope with minor deviations, adaptive control actively responds to changes in the system to improve control. This approach is needed with dynamic systems in unstable environments, from aircraft to medical robots.

With adaptive control, the controller collects data about the environment in which the system operates and uses this information to make changes to the way the system is controlled. Examples of adaptive control can be seen in some vehicles with the ability to adjust automatic braking systems for wet and icy conditions. In these cases, the system responds to conditions to improve accuracy, effectiveness and efficiency to make driving safer and easier in a wide variety of settings.

Control systems are often needed to make decisions, and adaptive control facilitates intelligent decision making based on conditions at a given time, rather than a set set of parameters developed by the person who built the system. In dynamic environments, this can be critical. Adaptive control can be used to control networks and other computer systems with varying user loads to help systems respond to changes before problems develop, such as switching users to different users, limiting traffic to prevent system crashes and so on.

Designing adaptive control requires a number of skills. In addition to developing a control system, the developer must also integrate some level of artificial intelligence along with data analysis capabilities, allowing the system to gather data and interpret it in meaningful ways. Because changes can happen very quickly, high processing speed is also required. Systems must be able to respond to subsecond changes and, ideally, take a proactive rather than retroactive approach to managing changing conditions.

People interested in this field can be found in colleges and universities, as well as in the labs of technology companies. Many people have advanced degrees in fields such as engineering, electronics, computer science, and robotics, as a high level of skill and education is required to design functional adaptive control systems. Rates of pay vary depending on the work environment; people in the private sector tend to earn more, but people working for government agencies and in university settings can access the latest research, developments and technologies, including classified material developed for military use.

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