Introduction to Control Science and Engineering, a first-level key discipline in Henan Province
Henan University of Technology (HAUT), initially established as Zhengzhou Grain College and Zhengzhou Mechanical Engineering College in 1956, merged to form HAUT in 2004. In 2010, it became a university jointly supported by the People's Government of Henan Province and the State Administration of Grain. In 2013, as the second unit of the "Henan Grain Crops Collaborative Innovation Center," it was selected as one of the first batch of universities under China's "2011 Plan." More than half of the management elites and technical backbones in the grain industry have been cultivated by HAUT, earning it the reputation as the "Whampoa Military Academy" of the grain industry.
HAUT has long focused on fundamental research and engineering technology development in post-harvest grain management, constructing a comprehensive disciplinary system integrating storage, processing, equipment, information technology, and management. It has established unique strengths in cultivating grain talents, innovating grain technologies, and serving the grain industry. HAUT hosts two of the five national engineering laboratories in post-harvest grain technology in China. It has received 10 National Science and Technology Progress Awards and 2 National Teaching Achievement Awards in recent years. HAUT has led the formulation and revision of 286 international and national grain industry standards, advancing industrial standardization. It has undertaken major national projects, including the "National Grain Reserve Depots" and the "Grain Security Project" with an investment of 120 billion RMB, making significant contributions to China's modern grain security system.
I．Historical Evolution of the Discipline
HAUT began cultivating master's degree students in 2000. In 2007, the secondary discipline of "Control Theory and Control Engineering" was rated as the seventh batch of key disciplines in Henan Province, and the same year, it started recruiting students for the secondary master's degree program in "Control Theory and Control Engineering," making it one of the earlier key disciplines in control in Henan Province. In 2011, it began recruiting students for the first-level master's degree program in "Control Science and Engineering," which was consecutively rated as the eighth and ninth batches of key disciplines in Henan Province. In 2012, it initiated doctoral student cultivation under the "Doctoral Talent Cultivation Project for Serving National Special Needs," and in 2021, it was approved to establish a doctoral degree program in the first-level discipline of "Control Science and Engineering." The university has built national and provincial-level platforms such as the National Engineering Laboratory for Deep Processing of Wheat and Corn, the Key Laboratory of Grain Information Processing and Control under the Ministry of Education, and the Henan Provincial Key Laboratory of Grain Photoelectric Detection and Control.
II．Disciplinary Research Directions
Relying on the university's nearly half-century of accumulation and industry resources in the grain discipline, it has long been dedicated to fundamental research and engineering technology development in sensing and detection, system modeling, control theory, and control engineering during the post-harvest storage and processing of grain. This has formed three main disciplinary directions: advanced control theory and applications, grain state information detection technologies and devices, and pattern recognition and intelligent systems.
(1) Research focuses on cooperative and quantitative control of multi-agent systems and complex networks, early fault diagnosis, etc. Innovative achievements have been made in areas such as network system pinning control, multi-agent consensus control, distributed quantization control of network systems, and distributed predictive control of grain storage systems. It has undertaken 15 national-level projects, published 12 ESI highly cited papers with 1,894 citations, and received 6 provincial and ministerial-level awards.
(2) Research focuses on specialized sensors for grain storage, grain state detection, and multi-source information fusion. Rapid online detection methods for grain quantity and mycotoxins have been proposed, and new specialized sensors for grain storage and portable grain quantity detectors have been developed. It has undertaken 10 national-level projects and received 8 provincial and ministerial-level awards, including the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award for the "Research, Development, and Integrated Innovation of the Four-in-One New Technology for Grain Reserves."
(3) Research focuses on image processing, machine learning, knowledge graph construction, intelligent robots, etc. Innovative achievements have been made in areas such as multi-domain transfer in grain storage systems, visual inspection and recognition, and autonomous inspection and control of grain storage robots. It has pioneered the development of grain robots for tasks such as grain surface inspection, grain leveling, and integrated in-and-out warehouse operations, filling the domestic gap in robot applications in grain storage. It has undertaken 9 national-level projects and received 4 provincial and ministerial-level awards.
III．Domestic and International Influence
This discipline has achieved a series of original achievements in the interdisciplinary field of grain storage, processing, and control, solving several scientific and technological challenges in the grain industry. The developed grain and oil processing control systems and grain storage state detection systems have been widely applied in the grain industry. It has formed long-term stable industry-university-research cooperation relationships with the State Administration of Grain, China Grain Reserves Corporation, directly affiliated grain depots of China Grain Reserves Corporation, and over a hundred grain and oil processing enterprises nationwide. It has cultivated a large number of relevant professionals, ensuring national grain security and supporting the engineering disciplines of our university, which have consistently ranked among the top 1% globally in ESI.
IV．Contributions to Societal Service
Centering on major national strategic needs and focusing on control theory challenges and critical technological bottlenecks that constrain the development of the grain industry and industrial transformation and upgrading, the discipline intensifies efforts to tackle key generic technological challenges, promotes the informatization and intellectualization of the grain industry, and serves national grain security. On the basis of encouraging free exploration, it places greater emphasis on the technological needs of local economic and social development in Henan. Organized and targeted project research and problem-solving are carried out around the needs for informatization development in fields such as food processing, equipment manufacturing, and power equipment in Henan, breaking through relevant technological challenges that constrain the control field of local economic development and promoting scientific and technological progress in Henan.
(1) Actively serving the national "Grain Security Project" and contributing to the national "Belt and Road" Initiative
The "Grain Security Project" is a major national project implemented to ensure grain security. This discipline has fully participated in the project's planning formulation, implementation, informatization development planning, and standard formulation, providing technical consulting and training services for the informatization construction of grain depots in provinces and municipalities such as Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Hainan. The rapidly developed detection instruments and equipment for grain quantity and grain storage mycotoxins have been widely applied in national grain reserve depots, contributing to the intelligent upgrading and transformation of traditional equipment in China's grain industry. Actively integrating into the national "Belt and Road" strategy, it conducts research on control issues involved in grain storage and processing, and the developed series of oil and flour processing control systems have been widely applied nationwide and exported to dozens of countries and regions including Russia, Pakistan, Serbia, Uzbekistan, the Philippines, Australia, and Mexico, enhancing China's international influence in the grain and oil processing industry.
(2) Strongly Supporting the Local Economy and Driving High-Quality Economic Development in Henan
We have conscientiously implemented major development strategies in Henan Province, such as innovation-driven development and the "Three Zones and One Cluster" initiative, actively participating in the main battlefields of Henan's economic construction and social development. We have conducted targeted and organized project research and problem-solving initiatives in line with the informatization development needs of Henan's food processing, equipment manufacturing, and power equipment sectors. We have actively built platforms for industry-university-research cooperation and exchanges, extensively engaging in school-local government and school-enterprise collaborations, forming a positive interaction with regional economic and social development. Addressing the construction needs of the Central Plains Economic Zone and the China (Zhengzhou) Intelligent Sensor Valley, we have strengthened cooperation with Zhengzhou City and the High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, successfully hosting the World Sensor Congress for consecutive years and providing intellectual support for the development of Zhengzhou's sensor and instrumentation industry. We have explored new models of university-local government-enterprise cooperation, engaging in strategic collaborations with renowned enterprises such as Sanquan Food, Synear Food, XJ Group, Pinggao Electric, Yutong Bus, Hanwei Electronics, Zhengxing Technology, Tuoren Group, and Suntront Tech. We have jointly established the National Quality Supervision and Inspection Center for New Energy Vehicle Power Supply Devices and the Key Laboratory for Environmental Protection Metrology and Testing of Henan Province with the Henan Institute of Metrology, the Henan Provincial Engineering Research Center for Intelligent Sensing and Processing with Hanwei Electronics, and the Zhengzhou Engineering Research Center for Multi-functional Smart Street Lamps with Zhengzhou Senyuan Technology, among others. Through joint technological breakthroughs and talent cultivation with these renowned enterprises, we have provided robust talent and technological support for local construction in Henan.
