Jasper J van Beers, Marten Scheffer, Prashant Solanki, Ingrid A van de Leemput, Egbert H van Nes, Coen C de Visser

PNAS 123 (27) e2608847123

From aircraft to power grids, controlled systems form a crucial part of human societies. Nonetheless, catastrophic failures happen. Many of those arise from the accumulation of incremental problems, such as natural wear and tear, that can go unnoticed until it is too late. We demonstrate that generic indicators of resilience can detect growing instabilities in damaged drones. The generic nature of our approach makes it compatible across diverse controlled systems. This not only allows for on-the-fly warning of instability but also facilitates anomaly detection during manufacturing and promotes proactive maintenance. A complementary application is to use our indicators for exploratory design, allowing one to “tinker” with systems through small adjustments and sensing quickly whether those worsen or improve system resilience.

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