Learning-Based Edge Sensing and Control Co-Design for Industrial Cyber–Physical System

The new generation of edge computing supported industrial cyber–physical system (ICPS) promotes the deep integration of sensing and control. The unknown model is one of the key challenges to characterize their interactions. In most existing works, many efforts have been devoted to overcoming the challenge for the single aspect of sensing and control. However, the industrial revolution puts forward the higher requirements of the overall production performance. To solve this problem, we propose a novel framework for learning-based edge sensing and control co-design. Specifically, the model learning error is first analyzed to bound the actual control performance. Then, the bound is further linked to the sensing design through the bridge of relaxed assumptions of the nonzero initial state and unknown order. Besides, the cloud-edge symphony (CES) algorithm is designed for the co-design problem solving considering the defects of the single edge computing unit (ECU). In the novel framework, the processes of sensing, control, and learning are comprehensively considered for global optimization. Finally, the proposed algorithm is applied to the personalized production of laminar cooling based on the semiphysical evaluation, and the effectiveness is verified by the results. Note to Practitioners—Edge computing supported ICPS deeply integrates the sensing and control processes. It is beneficial to realize the small-batch customized production for the individual demands in intelligent manufacturing. However, the inevitable problem of weak prior knowledge of system models motivates us to adopt appropriate learning methods to deal with the model inaccuracy and characterize the internal relationship between sensing, control, and model learning. In this article, we propose a novel framework to comprehensively consider the performance of different aspects for global optimization. Specifically, the relaxed assumptions of the nonzero initial state and unknown order are regarded as the bridge to combine edge sensing and control. The cloud-edge symphony (CES) algorithm is proposed to solve the co-design problem and applied to the laminar cooling process for evaluation. It is observed that better overall performance is achieved than previous methods. In the future, our framework can be further extended from the single edge computing unit (ECU) and collaboration with the industrial cloud platform to coordinate sensing and control between the multiple ECUs. Besides, the production requirements of specific applications can be further considered including the real-time response and the reuse of production experience.