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Dynamical Variable Structure Controller for Power Regulation of Wind Energy Conversion Systems
Hernn De Battista and Ricardo J. Mantz
AbstractThe paper addresses the problem of output power regulation of xed-pitch variable-speed wind energy conversion systems. Operation is constrained by practical reasons to the lowspeed side of the turbine powerspeed curve. Unfortunately, this region is characterized by a nonminimum phase dynamics which is an obstacle to perform the regulation task. A dynamical variable structure controller is developed that accomplishes the control objective despite this limitation. The proposed control strategy presents attractive features such as robustness to parametric uncertainties of the turbine and generator as well as to electric grid disturbances. Index TermsPower generation control, variable structure systems, wind energy.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE RAPID consumption of fuel resources in past decades and the growing interest in environment protection have been encouraging research and development of alternative methods for electricity generation. Wind energy is, for many reasons, one of the most promising renewable energy resources. In order to have control of the captured power, xed-pitch wind turbines should operate at variable speed. Variable-speed wind energy conversion systems (VS-WECS) frequently employ induction machines as generating units [1][3]. In some schemes, the wind turbine drives a squirrel cage generator (SCIG) connected to grid through a static converter [4], [5]. In other cases, the turbine is coupled to a double output induction generator (DOIG) with slip power recovery [6], [7]. The advantages and disadvantages of these schemes are summarized in [2] and [7]. Commonly, the prime control objective of VS-WECS is power efciency maximization. To achieve this goal the turbine tip-speed-ratio should be maintained at its optimum value despite wind variations. Nevertheless, control is not always aimed at capturing as much energy as possible. In fact, in above rated wind speed, the captured power needs to be limited. Although there are both mechanical and electrical constraints, the more severe ones are commonly on the electric machine and the electronic converter. Hence, regulation of the power managed by the generator (i.e., the output power) is usually intended [4]. In addition, output power regulation may also
Manuscript received August 13, 2003. This work was supported in part by CONICET, in part by CICpBA, in part by UNLP, and by ANPCyT. H. De Battista is with the Laboratorio de Electrnica Industrial, Control e Instrumentacin, UNLP C.C.91 (1900), La Plata, Argentina and also with the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) (e-mail: deba@ing.unlp.edu.ar). R. J. Mantz is with the Laboratorio de Electrnica Industrial, Control e Instrumentacin, UNLP C.C.91 (1900), La Plata, Argentina. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TEC.2004.827705

be desired even below rated wind speed. For instance, when a power demand has to be tracked such as in some autonomous systems [8] or when the supplied power is restricted by power quality problems of weak grids [9]. A required power below the available in the wind can be captured at two different tip-speed-ratios. Accordingly, there are two possible regions of turbine operation, namely the high- and low-speed regions. High-speed operation is frequently bounded by the speed limit of the machine. Conversely, regulation in the low-speed region is usually not restricted by speed constraints. However, the system has nonlinear nonminimum phase dynamics in this region. This adverse behavior is an obstacle to perform the regulation task. One of the rst approaches to power regulation is found in [8] where a dead beat control of output power was proposed. The knowledge of wind velocity is needed for controller implementation. So, it is estimated from the powerspeed characteristic of the turbine. Unfortunately, there are some inherent difculties with this approach. On one hand, a precise knowledge of the turbine aerodynamics is needed for estimation purposes. On the other hand, the turbine aerodynamics is not uniquely related with wind velocity, i.e., the wind cannot be uniquely determined from speed and power measurement. There are other control attempts concerning indirect regulation of the output power. They are based on controlling the aerodynamic torque to track a given constant power curve, but aerodynamic torque or shaft acceleration estimators are required. In addition, the aerodynamic power may differ substantially from output power during transients because of large turbine inertia. In [10], a variable structure controller (VSC) for output power regulation in the high-speed region is proposed. The controller is robust to electrical parameter uncertainties as well as to wind disturbances. However, if the same controller was used in the low-speed region to broaden the operation range, the same robustness properties could not be maintained. In fact, speed feedback would be necessary to avoid instability because of nonminimum phase dynamics. Moreover, wind estimation would be needed as well. In this paper, the use of variable structure systems (VSS) theory for wind power regulation is further investigated. A novel dynamical controller is proposed for low-speed output power regulation which overcomes the practical limitations of previous control solutions. An attractive feature of the proposed control strategy is the capability of zeroing in nite time a prescribed signal, which is designed to meet the control specications, through a discontinuous control policy. Moreover, this signal is maintained at zero despite wind variations, grid disturbances, parameter uncertainties, and estimation errors.

0885-8969/04$20.00 2004 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Turbine coefcients (a) C

and (b) .

The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the wind turbine, generator and mechanical models are described. The dynamical VSC controller is developed in Section III and its features are validated through simulation results in Section IV. Finally, Section V outlines the conclusions. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION A. Aerodynamics The power captured by the wind turbine is (1) where is the air density, is the length of the blades, and is the wind velocity. The power coefcient describes the turbine aerodynamics. is a nonlinear function of the [Fig. 1(a)], being the turbine tip-speed-ratio at speed. This coefcient reaches its maximum . Thus, the power available in the wind is . Consequently, when energy capture maximization is the main goal, the control system should track despite wind speed variations. If, conversely, extracting an amount of power below the available in the wind was de. sired, the power coefcient should be lower Thus, the wind turbine should operate at one of two possible or . Hence, there are two regions of opertip-speed-ratios and low-speed ation, the high-speed regions. [10] In Fig. 1(b), the coefcient (2) in the high-speed region, is illustrated. Note that in the low-speed region, and at . Another distinctive where the turbine stalls. As will turbine operating point is be seen in Section III, coefcient is closely related with system stability.

Fig. 2.

Powerspeed characteristic of the turbine.

Fig. 2 shows the powerspeed curve of a wind turbine with wind velocity as parameter. Besides, the maximum power efis plotted as a ciency locus dashed line. This line is the boundary between high- and lowspeed regions. B. Generator Units In VS-WECS, SCIG and DOIG are commonly employed. In schemes using SCIG [Fig. 3(a)], the machine is coupled to the grid through a static converter. Variable speed operation is through achieved by controlling the synchronous speed the frequency of the converter. In schemes using DOIG, the stator is directly connected to the grid whereas an electronic converter recovers the slip power. A static Kramer drive is usually employed as recovery drive. In this case, variable speed opof the eration is accomplished by adjusting the ring angle thyristors. In Fig. 3, the gearbox is omitted for simplicity sake (all the variables in the paper are referred to the low-speed side

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grid as electric power uctuations and a rigid model of the system is adequate for the purposes of this paper [4], [8], [14] (3) (4) is the inertia of the overall WECS and is the generator power. The input signal is or (more precisely ) depending on the WECS conguration. being the referThe output is the normalized power error, ence power. The dynamic behavior of the system is completely different in both regions of turbine operation. On one hand, the zero-dynamics, i.e., the dynamics of the system with the output forced to zero [15], is stable in the high-speed region. This property is exploited in [10] where a VSC is proposed to force the output to be zero despite wind variations. On the other hand, the zero-dynamics is unstable in the low-speed region due to the positive intrinsic speed feedback of the turbine. That is, is a nonminimum phase output of the system in this region. So, power regulation is comparatively more difcult and the same robustness properties cannot be achieved. There is, however, a signicant reason to develop stabilizing controllers for power regulation in the low-speed region: the speed limits of the machine do not restrict WECS operation to a narrow wind speed range as they do (independently of the control methodology) in the high-speed region. This restriction is particularly severe in WECS using DOIG. Moreover, regulation at rated power is in general only feasible in the low-speed region. As it was aforementioned, nonminimum phase dynamics are a serious obstacle for output regulation. In fact, when a feedback control system is designed to keep constant a nonminimum phase output, the control signal becomes unbounded. In the particular case of output power regulation of WECS operating in the low-speed region, speed feedback can be included in the control law to stabilize the closed-loop dynamics [8]. However, speed feedback introduces new inconveniences. In fact, computing the reference speed is not a simple task in practice. One possibility is to measure the wind with a single or an array of anemometers located near the turbine, but this measure may differ from the effective wind passing through the rotor. A more realistic option is the use of the turbine itself as anemometer [8]. That is, the wind velocity is estimated from power and shaft speed measures. However, this algorithm presents some drawbacks too: it requires a precise knowledge of and the solution is not unique: the turbine characteristic in fact, it provides two solutions at and . where

Fig. 3. WECS schemes using (a) squirrel-cage and (b) double-output induction generators.

Fig. 4. Torquespeed characteristic of (a) SCIG with static converter and (b) DOIG with static Kramer drive.

of the gearbox). Under the reasonable assumption that the mechanical dynamics is dominant, the steady-state models of the induction machines are adequate for torque calculation. Suitable for the schemes in Fig. 3 expressions of the generator torque are available in [11] and [12], respectively. Typical characteristics are depicted in Fig. 4 for both schemes parameterized and the cosine of the ring angle by the synchronous speed , respectively. C. Dynamics It is known that when the speed of the WECS is xed, the aerodynamic loads may be amplied and transmitted to the grid by underdamped oscillation modes of the drive-train. These modes should therefore be considered in the model [12] [13]. In this paper, however, the connection of the generator to the grid will be exible due to the nature of the control objective. Hence, the aerodynamic loads will not be transmitted to the

III. DYNAMICAL VARIABLE STRUCTURE CONTROL In this section, a novel stabilizing controller for output power regulation in the low-speed region is proposed which overcomes the practical limitations of previous approaches. In fact, the controller requires neither wind nor aerodynamic torque estimation, thus presenting robustness to uncertainties in wind velocity as curve). well as in the turbine aerodynamics (i.e., in the

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Fig. 5. Proposed control system.

The control algorithm is based on the VSS theory. A VSS comprises a set of continuous subsystems with a switching logic that is a function of the system state. A particular operation is achieved when switching occurs at very high frequency, ideally innite, constraining the system state to a manifold in the state space, named sliding surface. This kind of operation is called sliding mode (SM) and has many attractive features. It is robust to parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, the sliding dynamics is governed by the designer-chosen sliding surface, and it is easy to implement [16][19]. A. Discontinuous Controller Dynamics The basic idea of VSC is to switch among two possible control signals in order to steer the state trajectory toward a prescribed sliding surface in the state space. Once this surface is reached, switching occurs at very high frequency and a sliding regime is established on it. A schematic diagram of the dynamical SM controller proposed in this paper is shown in Fig. 5. The controller dynamics are described by the following equations: (5) (6) (7) (8) where is the controller output (i.e., for schemes using for schemes using DOIG with Kramer SCIG and is an internal state of the controller, and is a funcdrive), tion of the system state. The amplitude of the discontinuous action and the gains and are parameters to be designed. The controller output is obtained by integrating (6). This controller law has been designed to obtain the following ideal reaching dynamics [17]: (9) such that the surface coordinate function is zeroed in the nite . Thereafter, a sliding regime is established time on the surface dened by (10) The function is designed for the system to meet the control specications on its associated sliding surface (10). Speed feedback is included in (8) to avoid instability owing to the nonminimum phase WECS dynamics. Besides, the dynamic expanis included to eliminate steady state power errors. In sion following sections, some guidelines on the design of feedback gains and are given.

Besides assuring convergence toward the sliding surface, the switching action in (6) provides the inherent robustness properties of SM control. In fact, the discontinuous term can also be seen as the control effort that compensates for parameter uncertainties, external disturbances and estimation errors, maintaining the state trajectory on the sliding surface (10). In particular, electric parameter uncertainties, voltage and frequency generator redisturbances, linear approximation of the sponse and errors in the acceleration estimation are all perturbations satisfying the matching condition [16]. So, all sliding regimes on (10) will exhibit, independently of the selection of the controller gains and , the strong invariance property with respect to these perturbations. In principle, a compromise arises between speed of convergence and robustin the design of ness on one hand, and power ripple on the other hand. Fortunately, an advantage of dynamical SM over conventional SM is does not affect directly the that the discontinuous action control signal , but its derivative . Then, the chattering is signicantly reduced in this application. B. Stability Analysis The SM dynamics of the controlled system is obtained by evaluating (3) and (5) at (11) (12) (13) Given a constant wind velocity such that the reference power is below the available in the wind, the captured power equals its reference value at two different shaft speeds (low-speed operation) and (high-speed operation). Hence, there are two equilibrium points and . Expanding (1) in its Taylor series yields (14) where (15) (16) represents the higher order terms of the series expanand sion. Then, linearizing the SM dynamics (11)(12) around any of the equilibrium points is straightforward (17) (18) (19) where and . It is immediate to show from (17)(18) that a sufcient condition for local stability around the lowis speed equilibrium point (20)

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Fig. 7. Sliding regimes on  = 0.

Fig. 6.

Main sliding surface  = 0.

(21) That is, if (20)(21) hold, all sliding regimes in the vicinity will be stable. Conversely, for gains and satisfying of is unstable. At (20)(21), the high-speed equilibrium point high wind velocities, is usually beyond the speed limit of the machine and all sliding regimes converge toward the low-speed . However, at low wind velocities, both equilibrium point equilibrium points may be located within the speed limits of the machine and some sliding regimes may be unstable. Avoiding this kind of problems, which are inherent to nonlinear systems, is not a difcult task in VSC. For instance, auxiliary switching surfaces can be incorporated to the switching logic, preventing the system from reaching dangerous regions in the state space [12], [19]. C. Auxiliary Switching Surface in the state space deFig. 6 shows the sliding surface . The characterned by the variables istic of the turbine is also depicted for a given wind velocity. The parallel white lines denote the points of desired turbine power . Obviously, these lines intersect the sliding surface at the equilibrium points and . In addition, the optimum power locus is shown. Fig. 7 is the projection of Fig. 6 onto the plane. In this gure, a number of sliding regimes initiated at difare displayed (these trajectoferent points on the surface ries have been obtained by simulation of the system described in Section IV). Some of the trajectories converge toward the stable equilibrium point whereas the others are unstable. The line is the boundary of the domain of attraction of on the sliding surface. That is, if the surface (10) is reached at the left of , then the sliding regime will converge toward . Clearly, to avoid instability, the system should be prevented from reaching the sliding surface outside the domain of attraction of . With this aim, an auxiliary switching surface is
Fig. 8. Combined sliding surface  = 0.

added, which steers all state trajectories toward the domain of on . The proposed auxiliary surface is attraction of indeed the optimum power locus of the turbine, i.e., the surface dened by (22) Switching is now dependent of both switching functions . In fact, the discontinuous action (7) is replaced by and

(23) As a result of this switching logic, sliding modes occur on the depicted in Fig. 8. This surface coincides sliding surface with the main surface in the region where and

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with the auxiliary surface where can be described by (22),

. From (8) and

(24) (25) . whereas (23) can be rewritten as is no more an equilibrium point of the system, and Note: reach in nite time the main all sliding trajectories on sliding surface where all trajectories converge toward . is governed In fact, the sliding dynamics on by (26) (27) From (27), and . Assuming that the reference power is lower than the available in the wind, as , both and decrease until the main sliding surface is reached. To corroborate these assertions, new simulation results are shown in Fig. 9, which is the projection of Fig. 8 onto the plane. These new trajectories were obtained for the same initial conditions of Fig. 7. Note that all trajectories initiated below the maximum power locus have two phases. First, the reaching mode, i.e., the part of the trajectory from the initial condition to the new switching surface , and then the on . Clearly, all trajectories converge to , which is SM on . Hence, stability of all the unique equilibrium point on sliding regimes is assured. D. Performance Analysis The aim of the auxiliary surface described above is to steer all trajectories in the state space toward the stable region of the main surface (10) where the system performs satisfactorily. In the following paragraphs, the performance of the system on the main surface, in the vicinity of the equilibrium point, is analyzed in more detail. Furthermore, some guidelines for the design of the controller parameters and are provided. From the linearized SM dynamics (17)(19), the transfer funccan be obtained tion (28) where (29) (30) The control objective is for the generator power to track its reference value. Then, the parameters and , or alternatively and should be designed to minimize power uctuations caused by wind turbulence. Fig. 10 depicts the frequency reas parameter. Alsponse (for two different values of ) with
Fig. 10. Frequency response of the controlled system with f as parameter (a)  = 1=2 and (b)  = 2. Fig. 9. Sliding regimes on  = 0.

though other values of could be chosen to weight other freequals quency components, when (31) the peak of takes its minimum value (32) Then, the design procedure reduces to select the damping coefcient as a compromise between the peak value (which is a decreasing function of ) and the bandwidth that increases with . Finally, the controller parameters and are readily recovered (33) (34) and the condition (20)(21), as well as (31), is obviously satised. Naturally, the turbine coefcient varies with turbine and and constant, the gain wind velocities. So, to keep

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Fig. 11.

Block diagram of the controlled WECS. Fig. 12. (a) Wind velocity prole and (b) reference (dashed), wind and captured powers.

has to be continuously adjusted according to the operating conditions. A much simpler option is to design and from . Stability of (33)(34) for a given operating point where [i.e., (20)(21)] will be still guaranteed at any other operating condition provided the maximum value of coefcient satises . IV. SIMULATION EXAMPLE The behavior of the SM controller for power regulation of VS-WECS is assessed through an example. In particular, its robustness properties are corroborated. Simulation results are obtained for a medium-size (90 kW) wind-driven DOIG characteristic of the with static Kramer Drive. The turbine is displayed in Fig. 2 where the generator characteristics for the extreme values of the control signal are drawn in dotted line. Besides, the characteristic of the generator is depicted in Fig. 4(b). The overall inertia of the kgm . WECS is Fig. 11 depicts the block diagram of the controlled WECS under consideration. The switching function generator block computes the reference power (see (24)(25)) and comto generate the discontinpares it with the output power uous action . The feedback gains and are designed so that and at the strongest wind condition. Actually, the control signal dynamics is a simplied version of (6) (35) is the estimated slope of the generator characwhere teristic. On one hand, this simplies the control implementation. On the other hand, since the controller maintains the ability to enforce the sliding regimes on the prescribed surface, it puts in evidence the robustness properties of the controller to linearization of the generator torque, uncertainties in electrical parameters and variables, accelerator estimation errors, etc. In Fig. 9, the stability properties of the controller, that is its ability to steer all state trajectories toward the stable region of , are corroborated. In Figs. 12 and 13, new the surface simulation results are presented, which show the performance of the system during sliding mode operation. The wind velocity prole is drawn in Fig. 12(a). The power reference consists of a

Fig. 13.

(a) Surface coordinate. (b) Control signal. (c) Tip-speed-ratio.

series of steps illustrated in Fig. 12(b). Note that power regulation in the high-speed region at these wind conditions is impossible because of shaft speed constraints. Observation. Although in many applications the reference signal is constant and equal to the rated power of the WECS, the more generic case of a variable reference power is considered in this example. Actually, in autonomous systems or in WECS connected to weak grids, the reference power may be maintained below rated power to satisfy a (variable) demand or a given generation policy. The piece-wise constant reference signal considered in this example is particularly appropriate to examine the regulation properties during the sliding regimes as well as the reaching features of the VSC. Both the generator power transferred to the grid and the power available in the wind are also depicted in Fig. 12(b). It is seen that the generator power is maintained around its reference value despite large wind power uctuations, corroborating the satisfying regulation properties of the controller. Fig. 13(a) shows the ability of the controller to maintain the despite wind turbulence and system sliding regime on uncertainties. Actually, the system state leaves the sliding surface when reference steps occur because the system state cannot change instantaneously. Nevertheless, the discontinuous action

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forces the state trajectory to reach the sliding surface in a short time (see Fig. 13(a) at times 260 and 410 s). The control signal provided by the controller is depicted in Fig. 13(b). Finally, Fig. 13(c) depicts the tip-speed-ratio prole showing that the turbine operates in its low-speed region in order to capture just a small percentage of the wind power. V. CONCLUSION A novel dynamical SM controller is proposed for power regulation of wind driven induction generators. The controller steers the system state toward a given sliding surface in the state space where the control specications are satised. Stability conditions are derived and an auxiliary switching surface is added to avoid unstable dynamics in certain regions of operation. Moreover, some design guidelines for the controller gains are given in terms of a single parameter. As neither wind velocity nor aerodynamic torque estimation is needed, a precise knowledge of the turbine characteristic is not required. Therefore, the controller presents very attractive robustness properties. Moreover, the power transferred to grid is insensible to grid disturbances, estimation errors and other approximations. REFERENCES
[1] R. Spe and S. Bhowmik, Novel control strategies for variable speed doubly fed power generation systems, Renew. Energy, vol. 6, no. 8, pp. 907915, 1993. [2] M. Ermis, H. Ertan, M. Demirekler, B. Saribatir, Y. tug, M. Sezer, and I. ardici, Various induction generator schemes for wind-electricity generation, Elect. Power Syst. Res., vol. 23, pp. 7183, 1992. [3] P. Carlin, A. Laxson, and E. Muljadi, The history and state of the art of variable-speed wind turbine technology, National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO, Tech. Rep. NREL/TP-500-28 607, 2001. [4] A. Miller, E. Muljadi, and D. Zinger, A variable speed wind turbine power control, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 12, pp. 181186, June 1997. [5] G. Simes, B. Bose, and R. Spiegal, Fuzzy logic based intelligent control of a variable speed cage machine wind generator system, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 12, pp. 8795, Jan. 1997. [6] Z. Salameh and L. Kazda, Analysis of the steady state performance of the double output induction generator, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 1, pp. 2632, 1986. [7] R. Datta and V. Ranganathan, Variable speed wind power generation using a doubly fed wound rotor induction machine: A comparison with alternative schemes, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 17, pp. 414421, Sept. 2002. [8] T. Thiringer and J. Linders, Control by variable rotor speed of xedpitch wind turbine operating in speed range, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 8, pp. 520526, Sept. 1993. [9] J. Tande, Exploitation of wind energy resources in proximity to weak electric grids, in Proc. ENERGEX. Manama, 1998.

[10] H. De Battista, R. Mantz, and C. Christiansen, Dynamical sliding mode power control of wind driven induction generators, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 15, pp. 451457, Dec. 2000. [11] B. Bose, Power Electronics and AC Drives, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986. [12] H. De Battista, P. Puleston, R. Mantz, and C. Christiansen, Sliding mode control of wind energy systems with doig: Power efciency and torsional dynamics optimization, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 15, pp. 728734, May 2000. [13] P. Novak, T. Ekelund, I. Jovik, and B. Schmidtbauer, Modeling and control of a variable-speed wind-turbine drive-system dynamics, IEEE Control Syst. Mag., vol. 15, pp. 2838, Aug. 1995. [14] B. Saribatir and M. Sezer, Modeling and control of wind energy conversion systems, Int. J. Control, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 327343, 1987. [15] A. Isidori, Nonlinear Control Systems, 3rd ed, London, U.K.: Springer, 1995. [16] H. Sira-Ramrez, Differential geometric methods in variable structure systems, Int. J. Control, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 13591390, 1988. [17] H. Sira-Ramrez, On the dynamical sliding mode control of nonlinear systems, Int. J. Control, vol. 57, no. 5, pp. 10391061, 1993. [18] V. Utkin, Sliding Mode Control in Electromechanical Systems. London, U.K.: Taylor & Francis, 1999. [19] H. Bhler, Rglage par mode de glissement, Lausanne, Switzerland: Presses Polytechniques Romandes, 1986.

Hernn De Battista was born in La Plata, Argentina, in 1968. He received the B.S. degree (with highest honors) and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the National University of La Plata in 1994 and 2000, respectively. He has had a visiting appointment for a trimester at the Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain, in 2003. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the National University of La Plata and a Research Member of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET). His research interests include the application of nonlinear control to renewable energy systems. Dr. De Battista was granted the Argentinian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences Outstanding Young Investigator Award (national-annual award) in 2002.

Ricardo J. Mantz received the B.S.E.E. degree from the National University of La Plata, La Plata, Argentina, in 1980. Since then, he has been with the Laboratory of Industrial Electronics Control and Instrumentation (LEICI) in the Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, National University of La Plata, where he currently serves as Full Professor of Automatic Control. He is also a Research Member of the Scientic Research Commission (CICpBA). His primary area of interest is automatic control systems.