When designing automation for safety-critical technical systems, a large number of tests must be carried out according to ISO 262622 or IEC 61508 in order to show the safe behavior of the controls and algorithms developed against uncertainties occurring in the real world. With the increase in highly automated functions, typical product and system engineering are increasingly reaching their limits. The aim of the Functional Safety Control research group is therefore to establish methods very early in the automation design process that take into account the physical behavior of the technical system and its uncertainties in order to make safe or even guaranteed statements about the overall system behavior. This makes it possible to reduce the validation effort in the design process.

One research focus are safe model-based trajectory planning methods. The goal is to determine the behavior of a system under previously defined performance criteria. Methodical approaches, such as the calculation of reachable sets, enable the technical system to be controlled in a proactive manner in such a way that uncertainties are already explicitly taken into account in the behavior planning, so that the security of the system can be guaranteed. In this comprehensive system design, dynamic non-linearities and uncertainties of the cascaded system are integrated into the planning algorithm. In particular, over-actuated systems are the focus of current research, which represent a system class with a high number of drive or movement degrees of freedom in order to optimize performance and safety through given actuator redundancy. Another research focus is therefore the control design of these overdetermined technical systems. While maintaining a safe and requirement-oriented primary function, additional performance properties, such as energy consumption, are integrated within the design process. Areas of application are all-wheel drive vehicles, nanopositioning actuators, transport robots and multi-robot systems.