Networked control system

The defining feature of an NCS is that control and feedback signals are exchanged among the system's components in the form of information packages through a network.

Furthermore, featuring efficient sharing of data between their controllers, NCSs are able to easily fuse global information to make intelligent decisions over large physical spaces.

Their potential applications are numerous and cover a wide range of industries, such as space and terrestrial exploration, access in hazardous environments, factory automation, remote diagnostics and troubleshooting, experimental facilities, domestic robots, aircraft, automobiles, manufacturing plant monitoring, nursing homes and tele-operations.

New control strategies, kinematics of the actuators in the systems, reliability and security of communications, bandwidth allocation, development of data communication protocols, corresponding fault detection and fault tolerant control strategies, real-time information collection and efficient processing of sensors data are some of the relative topics studied in depth.

Chow, in ADAC Lab at North Carolina State University, proposed the gain scheduler middleware (GSM) methodology and applied it in iSpace.