
Dr. Oyas Wahyunggoro, a lecturer at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada (FT UGM), was inaugurated as a professor in the field of heuristic control on Thursday (Jun. 12).
In his inaugural address, titled “Heuristic Control and Its Applications and Development Potential in the Automotive Industry,” Professor Wahyunggoro stated that heuristic intelligent control systems continue to evolve in response to the growing need for adaptive, efficient systems capable of making decisions in complex and dynamic environments.
“Heuristic control is an approach that utilizes experience-based knowledge or practical rules to produce effective control decisions, especially in systems that are difficult to model mathematically,” he explained.
According to him, this approach has been applied in various domains for a long time. In recent years, its potential application in the automotive sector has expanded, particularly in the development of driver assistance systems and intelligent vehicles. He emphasized how heuristic methods can respond to modern control system challenges.
“This heuristic approach can be applied in industry 4.0, transportation, and surveillance systems, and it holds significant untapped potential in the automotive sector,” said Professor Wahyunggoro.
Furthermore, heuristic control has also seen growing adoption across various disciplines, including medicine, engineering, and information technology. In practice, control systems and intelligent systems can be synergistically integrated to form intelligent control systems.
These intelligent systems can be based on learning, experience, knowledge, or statistics, collectively known as heuristic systems. When control systems are combined with heuristic-based intelligent systems, they form what is known as heuristic control systems.
“The development of heuristic control systems has been progressing rapidly, and their applications are becoming increasingly broad and complex,” he added.
Professor Wahyunggoro highlighted the success and impact of heuristic control systems across various sectors, including industry, transportation, and surveillance. With rapid advances in the automotive field, particularly in vehicle electrification, including fully electric and hybrid vehicles, he believes there is still great potential to apply heuristic control systems in the automotive sector.
One example is the use of a new feature called hill-up control (HUC), which works in conjunction with traction control. This HUC feature is a new concept in research and development that draws on the working principles of hill descent control (HDC).
In HDC, the driver activates the system, releases the brake and accelerator pedals, and then proceeds to drive. The system then automatically manages braking, throttle valve opening, and crawl ratio according to the road’s downhill condition.
Meanwhile, in crawl control, torque and braking are managed synergistically, with greater complexity, typically used when vehicles are stuck in extreme terrains, such as deep mud or sand.
He further explained that intelligent systems are designed to solve both technical and non-technical problems swiftly, accurately, and adaptively. He categorized intelligent systems into four types: mathematically based intelligent systems, learning-based intelligent systems, experience- or heuristic-based intelligent systems, and hybrid heuristic learning-based intelligent systems.
Despite their sophistication and capabilities, Professor Wahyunggoro reminded the audience that these systems are human creations. Their intelligence is the result of logic, computation, and data, not consciousness.
“Intelligent systems are merely tools that will continue to develop but will never match the essence of human creation,” he affirmed.
As such, he emphasized the responsibility of scientists to guide the development of intelligent systems, ensuring they remain grounded in humanitarian values, ethics, and public benefit.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Photographer: Donnie