ABRO Ph.D. course: Hybrid systems, Computation and Control
Hybrid dynamical systems are those dynamical systems exhibiting both continuous evolution and discrete transitions. In general, the state of a hybrid system is defined by the values of some continuous variables and a discrete mode. Hybrid systems are used to model several cyber-physical systems, including, for example, physical systems with logic-dynamic controllers. In fact, they offer relatively clean modeling solutions for phenomena for which the corresponding classical models are inadequate or do not provide a good tradeoff between real-world relevance and model complexity. The pervasive diffusion of increasingly complex digital controllers and supervisors of physical systems (as for example “embedded” systems) led, in the last years, to a systematic study of hybrid systems. This study is generally more challenging than that of purely discrete or purely continuous systems, because of the interaction between dynamics of different nature.
The aim of this course is that of introducing the student to the area of hybrid systems, ranging from modeling, over analysis and simulation, to verification and control.