Relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Edge Computing
Anyone who has studied the field of science and engineering should have heard the word “control” once. In particular, “automatic control” is often used in the field of science and engineering. The field of control is so deep that one specialized book can be written by itself, but this time, let’s take a brief look at “What is control?”. We will discuss the difference between automatic control and manual control, the difference between feedback control and feed-forward control, and the relationship between artificial intelligence and edge computing, which have become popular in recent years.
What is the definition of control? “Control” is defined as “manipulating and adjusting the system to achieve the desired state”. That is, to work with the system to bring it to the desired state or to maintain it.
“Control” can be roughly divided into two types. “Manual control” and “automatic control”. Manual control means that humans work on the system. In other words, it is defined as “human intervention in the operations and adjustments performed on the system.” For example, if it’s cold and usually a bonfire, and the fire is so small that it doesn’t get warm, then “control” is to increase the amount of firewood to make the fire bigger. In such a case, it is considered that human beings control the size of the bonfire by adjusting the control amount of “the amount of firewood” with the “size of fire” as the target amount for the “heating system” of the bonfire can do.
On the other hand, automatic control is automatically working on the system. In other words, it is defined as “performing operations and adjustments to the system without human intervention”. For example, when it is hot and the air conditioner is turned on, humans only set the temperature. Then, the air conditioner automatically adjusts the temperature to reach or maintain that temperature. In such a case, it can be considered that the “cooling system” called an air conditioner automatically controls the temperature with the set temperature as the target amount and the refrigerant circulation amount as the control amount.
In the above air conditioner example, the amount of refrigerant circulation is controlled as the control amount for the set target amount. In other words, the current amount (room temperature) is measured by a sensor, and the controlled amount (refrigerant circulation amount) is determined by comparing it with the target amount (set room temperature). And by repeating this, the current amount is gradually approaching the target amount. In other words, the control method is used to bring the current quantity closer to the target quantity by comparing the current quantity with the target quantity and adding the difference to the current quantity. Such a control method is called feedback control. This is because the difference is fed back to the current amount and added.
Feedback control is a very common and widely used control method. However, in principle, it has the disadvantage that there is a delay before the current amount reaches the target amount. For example, it takes time to reach the set temperature of the bath, and it takes time for the temperature of the air conditioner to stabilize.
On the other hand, there is feedforward control. Feedforward control is a control method that predicts the occurrence of a disturbance and the amount of control when there is a disturbance in the system or when the required amount of control can be predicted in advance and adds the corresponding amount of control. Often used in addition to feedback control.
