Robust State Estimation of Complex Multi-Object Systems. Conceptual advances will be made in the area of robust state estimation of complex systems. New design rules will be developed and published in the top international journals and major international conferences. The main benefit of this project will be its direct applications to industrial control problems in the military equipment and manufacturing industries, bio-engineering, and automobile industry. We also build a world class research ....Robust State Estimation of Complex Multi-Object Systems. Conceptual advances will be made in the area of robust state estimation of complex systems. New design rules will be developed and published in the top international journals and major international conferences. The main benefit of this project will be its direct applications to industrial control problems in the military equipment and manufacturing industries, bio-engineering, and automobile industry. We also build a world class research group at the University of New South Wales to focus attention on multi-object state estimation. There will be increased capacity for contract research, international collaboration with leading researchers in the area and high quality Ph.D. graduates in the field of Systems and Control.Read moreRead less
Analysis and Design of Networked Control Systems. Drive-by-wire cars, fly-by-wire aircraft and sensor/actuator wireless networks in process and manufacturing industries are just a few examples of emerging networked control technologies that are currently reshaping our world. These technological advances have a vast potential to reduce the cost, weight and volume of engineered systems, simplify their maintenance and installation and their novel architectures and features may enable us to address ....Analysis and Design of Networked Control Systems. Drive-by-wire cars, fly-by-wire aircraft and sensor/actuator wireless networks in process and manufacturing industries are just a few examples of emerging networked control technologies that are currently reshaping our world. These technological advances have a vast potential to reduce the cost, weight and volume of engineered systems, simplify their maintenance and installation and their novel architectures and features may enable us to address significant environmental and socio-economic challenges, such as an increased demand for energy and other limited resources. This project will develop a systematic design methodology for networked control systems that will be essential in ensuring that its full potential is exploited.Read moreRead less
Safe Adaptive Control. Adaptive controllers are intelligent controllers, which can redesign themselves as they learn more about the environment. There are many algorithms for adaptive controllers; some of them can cause unacceptable behaviour during the learning process. Safe adaptive controllers are those for which this behaviour is ruled out. This project is concerned with developing procedures for guaranteeing the safety property in a wide variety of situations.
Decentralized Control Problems for Networked Systems. The conceptual advances to be made in the area decentralized control of networked systems.
New design rules for decentralized control in networked systems will be developed and published in the top international journals and major international conferences.
Also, a contribution of the project will be to produce high quality Ph.D. graduates in this area of control theory.
Numerical Algorithms for Solving Convex Optimization Problems Arising in Systems and Control Theory. The need to optimize occurs frequently in engineering applications. Typically one has a set of constraints specifying what solutions are allowable or meet design specifications and one would like to choose from these allowable solutions one which is optimal with respect to some meaningful metric. Such optimization problems tend to be rather complicated and must be solved numerically. This project ....Numerical Algorithms for Solving Convex Optimization Problems Arising in Systems and Control Theory. The need to optimize occurs frequently in engineering applications. Typically one has a set of constraints specifying what solutions are allowable or meet design specifications and one would like to choose from these allowable solutions one which is optimal with respect to some meaningful metric. Such optimization problems tend to be rather complicated and must be solved numerically. This project is concerned with creating improved numerical algorithms for solving particular important classes of optimization problems that arise in systems and control theory.Read moreRead less
Analysis and design of control systems with saturation and time-delay. Control engineering is an enabling technology without which most modern engineering systems, such as aircrafts or Internet, can not operate properly. Actuator saturation and time-delays are undesirable phenomena that often arise in control systems leading to poor performance and sometimes instability. For example, both of these phenomena arise in control of modern telecommunication systems, such as Active Queue Management in ....Analysis and design of control systems with saturation and time-delay. Control engineering is an enabling technology without which most modern engineering systems, such as aircrafts or Internet, can not operate properly. Actuator saturation and time-delays are undesirable phenomena that often arise in control systems leading to poor performance and sometimes instability. For example, both of these phenomena arise in control of modern telecommunication systems, such as Active Queue Management in TCP networks. The project aims at tackling these phenomena by using recently developed techniques in antiwindup for saturating actuators and by revisiting some classical methods for Smith predictor design for time-delayed systems.Read moreRead less
Measurement Feedback Control of Nonlinear and Quantum Systems. The purpose of control systems is to regulate the behaviour of a diverse range of engineering systems including those found in aerospace, manufacturing and telecommunications, as well as in important emerging fields including quantum technology. The aim of this project is to develop measurement feedback design methodologies for systems modelled by nonlinear or quantum dynamics. The project is motivated by the need for systematic meth ....Measurement Feedback Control of Nonlinear and Quantum Systems. The purpose of control systems is to regulate the behaviour of a diverse range of engineering systems including those found in aerospace, manufacturing and telecommunications, as well as in important emerging fields including quantum technology. The aim of this project is to develop measurement feedback design methodologies for systems modelled by nonlinear or quantum dynamics. The project is motivated by the need for systematic methods for robust control system design. A central issue concerns suitable representation and use of measurement information for feedback control.Read moreRead less
Uncertain Systems Theory applied to Nonlinear Robust Control and Filtering. Feedback control systems are becoming increasingly important in manufacturing industry, the automotive industry, defence applications as well as in many non-industrial applications such as the management of the environment or the economy. By developing new techniques for the design of high performance robust nonlinear controllers and filters which are widely applicable in industrial applications, this project will help m ....Uncertain Systems Theory applied to Nonlinear Robust Control and Filtering. Feedback control systems are becoming increasingly important in manufacturing industry, the automotive industry, defence applications as well as in many non-industrial applications such as the management of the environment or the economy. By developing new techniques for the design of high performance robust nonlinear controllers and filters which are widely applicable in industrial applications, this project will help make existing industrial technologies more efficient and make new industrial technologies feasible. Moreover, the research training carried out in the project will add to available a pool of experts in the areas of robust nonlinear control and filtering. Read moreRead less
Mathematical, logical and computational foundations of hybrid control systems, and their application to design and synthesis problems in control engineering. Hybrid control systems are mathematical models of heterogeneous systems consisting of digital computer components interacting in real-time with continuous physical processes. Their many engineering applications include air traffic control, medical technology and automated transport. Motivated by such safety-critical and high-confidence appl ....Mathematical, logical and computational foundations of hybrid control systems, and their application to design and synthesis problems in control engineering. Hybrid control systems are mathematical models of heterogeneous systems consisting of digital computer components interacting in real-time with continuous physical processes. Their many engineering applications include air traffic control, medical technology and automated transport. Motivated by such safety-critical and high-confidence applications, the project aims to develop a unified framework of mathematical logics adequate to formally represent and reason about the structure, behaviour, and properties of hybrid control systems, and use this to develop methodologies for automatically synthesising hybrid control programs that are provably correct with respect to their specifications. Other outcomes include prototype software implementations of hybrid controller design tools.Read moreRead less
Nonlinear systems with disturbances: analysis, controller design and tradeoffs. A range of classical asymptotic methods (averaging, singular perturbations and slowly varying techniques) have been recently generalized to deal with nonlinear systems with disturbances. The goal of this proposal is the activation of these methods in analysis, controller design and understanding the design tradeoffs of nonlinear system with disturbances. Application areas are in adaptive, vibrational and gain schedul ....Nonlinear systems with disturbances: analysis, controller design and tradeoffs. A range of classical asymptotic methods (averaging, singular perturbations and slowly varying techniques) have been recently generalized to deal with nonlinear systems with disturbances. The goal of this proposal is the activation of these methods in analysis, controller design and understanding the design tradeoffs of nonlinear system with disturbances. Application areas are in adaptive, vibrational and gain scheduling control.Read moreRead less