Nonlinear Systems and Control

Research lines:

Robust Control
Stability and Stabilization
Tracking and Regulation
Optimal Control and Stochastic Systems
Hybrid Systems
Discrete-time and Sampled Data Systems
Data Acquisition and Sensor Networks
Control Applications

Members:
Battilotti Stefano, Benvenuti Luca, Califano Claudia, Di Giamberardino Paolo, Iacoviello Daniela, Isidori Alberto, Monaco Salvatore (leader).

PhD Students:
Marwa Ahmed, Raffaello Borghi, Giovanni Mattei, Lorenzo Ricciardi Celsi

Research on nonlinear systems and control at the University Sapienza has been active since the early 70s and, historically, has played a major role worldwide. The geometric approach to nonlinear feedback design, developed in the late 70s, marked the beginning of a new area of research which, in the subsequent decades, has profoundly influenced the development of the entire field. The concept of (nonlinear) feedback equivalence and of zero dynamics, their properties and implications in feedback design, are perhaps the most frequently used concepts in feedback stabilization. The geometric approach also plays a fundamental role in the analysis of systems evolving on Lie groups, with numerous applications to the control of spacecrafts and mobile robots. The natural evolution of the geometric approach to analysis and design of nonlinear systems led to a refinement of concepts underlying the design of nonlinear controllers to the purpose of shaping the steady-state behavior of a system. Currently, this line of research is pursued with the study of problems arising in the regulation of systems possessing unstable zero dynamics and in the development of methods for robust stabilization via measurement feedback. A general framework for robust stabilization reposes of the concept of filtered Lyapunov functions. Tools for the design of composite filtered Lyapunov functions have been developed. Robust and nonlinear control techniques have proven useful to achieve control objectives in the case of restricted information structure, e.g. measurements taking values only in a finite set and/or feedback delivered to the actuators erratically. A major challenge in the research on control with limited information is the design of controllers which are distributed over a network. In this case, the controllers cooperate to achieve a common goal but have access only to limited information provided by their neighbors.

Analysis and design of real control systems integrating devices and computational procedures in a digital context involves ad-hoc methods. Nonlinear discrete-time and sampled data systems are the subjects of an investigation developed at La Sapienza from the early 80s, in a still active cooperation with the Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmès of the French CNRS. The research activity has been focused on solving nonlinear control problems in discrete-time and on finding digital solutions to continuous-time control systems. One of the major outcome of the investigation has been the settlement of an original approach, mixed by algebraic and geometric concepts, used either to prove the existence of solutions in discrete-time or to compute approximated solutions in the digital context. Two aspects are at the bases of the more recent developments: a new representation of discrete-time dynamics, which provides a natural framework for comparing results from the continuous-time and discrete-time contexts, the concept of exact sampled model under feedback, which can be used to design piecewise continuous controllers in a direct digital context. From the solution to feedback linearization, stabilization, regulation, observer theory, new research lines are in the direction of Lyapunov and passivity based design, inverse optimal control and time delayed systems in discrete-time and under sampling. Particular attention is devoted to the settlement of executable algorithms for computing the proposed solutions.

Measurements devices, algorithms, data handling and transmission represent critical aspects in any distributed control problem. The number of devices, their location, the energy consumption, the data-communication links and the distributed data handling are nowadays classical problems in this context. New issues deal with dynamic sensor networks, where mobile platforms are assimilated to intelligent devices, in which motion planning and control problems pose additional requirements and make harder the solution of the task. The full problem formulation as a high dimensional nonlinear dynamics is a challenging interdisciplinary area of research towards easier and cheaper solutions to problems like surveillance, monitoring, decentralized and distributed control. Problems under investigation in this field concern sensor and actuator devices, computation algorithms, local and global coordinated control, network communication protocols and data acquisition and fusion.

The applicative aspects of the research activities are carried out at the System and Control Laboratory, founded in 1995.

Projects:

Stability analysis and implementation of networked systems governed by Kuramoto oscillators (2 consecutive projects) - September 2008, August 2010 - The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Totally polymeric ionic transducers: applicability study, performance analysis and prototypical realizations for advanced sensor-actuator devices - March 2010, December 2012 - MIUR PRIN.

SARFIRE: February 2010 - February 2012 - ASI,

Microstructure influence on fatigue damaging micro-mechanisms in ductile cast irons - 2011, MIUR PRIN 2009.

Concezione di una piattaforma robotica per l'ispezione visiva della macchina Tokamak FTU- 2012, ENEA.