The Journey of Model-Free Adaptive (MFA) Control

In March 2014, CyboSoft celebrated its 20th anniversary. As CEO of a technology company, I continue to wonder what important things we can do to make a difference. In my view, our world is facing at least the following critical threats:

• Global warming and climate changes,
• Ever increasing pollution to the environment in air, water, soil, and food,
• Shrinking natural resources and explosive growth in world population, and
• Aging society with healthcare needs and out of control cost.

It is profound to see that automatic control is very much related to these critical issues:

• Poor combustion control in fossil fuel causes carbon and nitric gas emissions affecting global warming and climate changes,
• Poor pH control in wastewater treatment process causes waste of chemical reagent and increase of water pollution,
• Control difficulties slow down the adoption of renewable energy, and
• Automatic control can make medical devices such as an “artificial pancreas” a reality, which can benefit millions of patients.

What have we done as a company?  Model-Free Adaptive (MFA) controllers have been deployed on a large scale in building control, oil and gas drilling, and pH control. CyboSoft has devoted major resources in the R&D of control technologies and products for advanced power boiler control and industrial furnace control in a number of US Department of Energy grant projects and achieved good success. 

In the solar industry, MFA control software has been embedded in CyboEnergy's CyboInverter, a patented and award-winning solar power Mini-Inverter. CyboInverter has 4 input channels, each of which has its own control and maximum power point tracking (MPPT) mechanism so that power production is maximized and the partial shading problem is eliminated.  However, from a control point of view, CyboInverter is a 4-input-1-output (4x1), high-speed, and nonlinear process, which is extremely difficult to control using conventional or model-based control methods. We made it work by using MFA, which validates the contribution and potential of MFA in the renewable energy field.

Although the MFA control products have been on the market since 1997, due to MFA’s increasing demand and importance in addressing critical issues that are threatening our world and lives, I believe our journey has just begun.

George S. Cheng, Ph.D. CEO
CyboSoft and CyboEnergy
October 2014 in Rancho Cordova, California, USA
Contact me at LinkedIn

About CyboSoft and CyboEnergy

Founded in 1994, CyboSoft, General Cybernation Group, Inc., is the leader in control technology serving the worldwide process control, building control, and equipment control markets. CyboSoft’s patented Model-Free Adaptive (MFA) control technology for automatically controlling physical processes is a major breakthrough. No other comparable technology possesses all the attributes of MFA. CyboSoft received the 2007 Frost & Sullivan “North America Technology Leadership Award” in the field of Industrial Automation.

CyboEnergy is a subsidiary of CyboSoft, focusing on the development, manufacturing, marketing, and servicing of the product lines in the energy and clean energy field. CyboEnergy is the developer of the world's first solar power Mini-Inverter, CyboInverter, which possesses the key merits of both central inverters and microinverters. CyboEnergy received the Frost & Sullivan's 2013 Global Product Differentiation Excellence Award in Solar Inverters.

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Cybo, CyboSoft, and MFA are registered trademarks of CyboSoft, General Cybernation Group, Inc.
CyboEnergy and CyboInverter are registered trademarks of CyboEnergy, Inc.