Arne Dankers

Assistant Professor.

Electrical and Software Engineering, University of Calgary

Arne_Dankers_cropped_body.jpg

ICT 413

Department of Electrical and Software Engineering

Calgary, Canada

I was awarded an M.Sc. at the University of Calgary in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. from the Delft Center for Systems and Control (DCSC) at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.

My research is in system identification (aka data driven modelling). The main point of system identification is to estimate a model of a system (i.e. learn the governing differential equations of a system) given data generated by the system. I am developing a framework to make it possible to estimate the dynamics of a component of a complex system the consists of several of interconnected, nonlinear components. Some examples include power grids and robotic systems. This framework can then be used to monitor the components of a system for changes or faults (preventative maintenance, or fault detection), or to (re)design/adapt controllers to ensure optimality. For example, the objective may be to monitor the health of a battery connected to the grid, or monitor a gearbox in a robotic arm to detect when the gearbox is wearing out so that it can be replaced before it fails.

I combine tools from control engineering, system identification, statistics, machine learning, mathematical modelling, and graph theory to develop this framework.

selected publications

  1. Identification of dynamic models in complex networks with prediction error methods—Basic methods for consistent module estimates
    Paul M.J. Van den Hof, Arne Dankers, Peter S.C. Heuberger, and Xavier Bombois
    Automatica, 2013
  2. Identification of Dynamic Models in Complex Networks With Prediction Error Methods: Predictor Input Selection
    Arne Dankers, Paul M. J. Hof, Xavier Bombois, and Peter S. C. Heuberger
    IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Apr 2016
  3. Errors-in-variables identification in dynamic networks — Consistency results for an instrumental variable approach
    Arne Dankers, Paul M.J. Van den Hof, Xavier Bombois, and Peter S.C. Heuberger
    Automatica, Apr 2015