Abstract-The objective of this paper is to provide some initial results on the application of control tools to the problem treatment design. Human behavior and reaction to treatment is complex and dependent on many unmeasurable external stimuli. Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, it cannot be described by simple models. Hence, one of the main messages in this paper is that, to design a treatment (controller) one cannot rely on exact models. More precisely, to be able to design effective treatments, we propose to use "simple" uncertain affine models whose response "covers" the most probable subject responses. So, we propose a simple model that contains two different types of uncertainties: one aimed at uncertainty of the dynamics and another aimed at approximating external perturbations that patients face in their daily life. With this model at hand, we design a robust model predictive controller, where one relies on the special structure of the uncertainty to develop efficient optimization algorithms.
I. INTRODUCTIONAlthough, the use of control algorithms in treatment context is not new there is still limited use of the concept of feedback in the design of treatments especially in the area of behavioral sciences. In this paper, we present a preliminary attempt to apply some well-known concepts from robust controller design to the development of efficient and robust intervention for behavioural treatments.In the design of treatments in a behavioral context, one usually starts with data from several patients collected in a study. From this, one determines an approximate behavioral model to be used in the design of the control law. The first one is both variability in behavior and the way patients respond to treatment in study data leads to high inaccuracy of the models obtained. Moreover, in a practical setting a patient's behavior is always affected by external perturbations from events in daily life. All this leads to a large amount of uncertainty in the model and, hence, the need for feedback and, especially, robustness. Therefore, given the fact that one can increase the robustness of the overall treatment by using a control approach, the interest in using algorithms from control theory in a treatment context is growing. Moreover, the increasing use of portable devices enables the collection of information and delivery of the treatment in a timely manner and the possibility of automating treatments.