ISMA

Professor
Kevin L. Moore, Ph.D., P.E.
Dean,
College of Engineering and Computational Sciences Colorado School of Mines

Tile:
Applications of the Consensus Variable Approach to Coordination and Control -
UAVs, Autonomous Mobile Radios, and Energy-Efficient Buildings

In
this talk we discuss the consensus variable approach to the coordination and
control of cyberphysical systems (those with a tight integration of physical
dynamics, sensors and actuators, and computing infrastructure). We begin with an overview of motivating
problems and a summary of key results related to the consensus (or agreement)
paradigm. We illustrate the application of this idea to several problems,
including simulation of swarms, experimental demonstration of formation control
of mote-based robots, and experimental demonstration of robotic autonomous
mobile radio nodes for wireless tethering between a base station and a leader
in a tunnel exploration scenario. We note that a consensus protocol can be
represented as a graph with (static) weighted edges and nodes that are
integrators. Generalizing this idea, we next present what we call dynamic
consensus networks. Such networks are graphs whose nodes are integrators and
whose edges are real rational functions representing dynamical systems that
couple the nodes. We show that the modeling of thermal processes in buildings
motivates such a system and from this motivation we generalize the notions of
interconnection matrices and Laplacians to the case of graphs with integrating
nodes and dynamic edges. We give conditions under which such graphs admit
consensus, meaning that in the steady-state the node variables converge to a
common value. Finally, we consider the collective description and properties of
the interconnection of one dynamic graph (the plant) with another (the
controller). We conclude with a discussion of research questions related to
these ideas and to their application to energy-efficient control of buildings
and other systems, such as the power grid.

Biography:

Kevin L. Moore
is the Dean of the College of Engineering and Computational Sciences at the
Colorado School of Mines, where he is the G.A. Dobelman Distinguished Chair and
Professor of Engineering. He is also Director of the Center for Robotics,
Automation, and Distributed Intelligence. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University and the University of
Southern California, respectively. He received the Ph.D. in electrical
engineering, with an emphasis in control theory, from Texas A&M University.
He has been a senior scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics
Laboratory, where he worked in the area of unattended air vehicles, cooperative
control, and autonomous systems; an Associate Professor at Idaho State
University; and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Utah
State University, where he was the Director of the Center for Self-Organizing
and Intelligent Systems, directing multi-disciplinary research teams of students
and professionals developing a variety of autonomous robots for government and
commercial applications. He also worked in industry for three years pre-Ph.D as
a member of the technical staff at Hughes Aircraft Company. His research
interests include iterative learning control, autonomous systems and robotics,
and applications of control to industrial and mechatronic systems. He is the
co-author of the research monograph Iterative
Learning Control: Robustness and Monotonic Convergence for Interval Systems,
author of the research monograph
Iterative Learning Control for Deterministic Systems, and co-author of the
book Sensing, Modeling, and Control of
Gas Metal Arc Welding. He is a professional engineer, involved in several
professional societies and editorial boards, and is interested in engineering
education, particularly capstone senior design. He is a senior member of IEEE
and serves as chair of the IEEE Control System Society Technical Committee on
Intelligent Control.

Professor
Masayoshi Tomizuka
University
of California, Berkeley

Title: Enhancing
Human Machine Interaction via Mechatronic Actuation 

Abstract:

Mechatronics technologies are applied to assist human in many ways.  One
way is to let actuators supply force and torque so that human may accomplish
certain tasks with smaller muscular force.  We will examine three
different problems of this kind of assistance: 1) mobility assistance
for  elderly and partially impaired patients, 2) electric
bicycle and 3) variable-gear-ratio steering system  for
automobiles.  Actuators for mobility assistance must be compact, generate
reasonably large  torque and be back-drivable. Series elastic actuation
using a geared motor makes it possible to design a back-drivable light weight
high torque actuation system.  In electric bicycle, the human pedal torque
is measured and a motor supplies an extra torque to assist the rider.  The
assistive strategy considers a unique feature of the human pedal torque that it
is not constant but varies over a pedal cycle. In variable-gear-steering, the
gear ratio is varied as a function of the vehicle speed to change operability.
The variable gear ratio may introduce reaction torque of the steering wheel
unnatural to the driver unless the control algorithm is properly
designed. 

Biography:

Professor
Masayoshi Tomizuka received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering
from Keio University, Japan and his Ph. D. degree in Mechanical Engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1974, he joined the faculty
of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at
Berkeley, where he currently holds the Cheryl and John Neerhout, Jr.,
Distinguished Professorship Chair and serves as Associate Dean of Engineering.
He served as Program Director of the Dynamic Systems and Control Program of the
National Science Foundation (2002-2004). He has published over 550 articles in
professional journals and conference proceedings. He served as Technical Editor
of the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control (J-DSMC),
Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, and Associate
Editor of the Journal of the International Federation of Automatic Control
(IFAC), Automatica. He served as President of the American Automatic Control
Council (AACC) (1998-99) and as Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on
Mechatronic Systems. He is a Fellow of ASME, IEEE, IFAC and SME. He is the
recipient of the J-DSMC Best Paper Award (1995, 2000), the DSCD Outstanding
Investigator Award (1996), the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award (ASME,
1997), the Rufus Oldenburger Medal (ASME, 2002) and the John R. Ragazzini Award
(AACC, 2006).

Professor
Rafael Fierro
Department
of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University
of New Mexico

Title: Coordination of Multiple Heterogeneous Autonomous
Vehicles

Abstract:

Unmanned ground
and aerial vehicles are becoming crucial to both civilian and military
applications because of their ability to assist humans in carrying out
dangerous yet vital missions such as rescue operations and surveillance of
hostile environments. The paradigm that emerges from these applications is a
set of mobile or stationary targets that must be detected and possibly pursued
by multiple heterogeneous mobile platforms. In all of these applications, the
vehicle network's performance can be greatly enhanced by coordinating and
implementing future sensor actions intelligently, based both on prior knowledge
and on the information obtained online. In this talk, we describe an approach
that enables prioritized perception and makes use of team of autonomous robots
with different capabilities when large search areas need to be investigated. A
heterogeneous team allows for the robots to become specialized in their
abilities and therefore accomplish sub-goals more efficiently which in turn
makes the overall mission more efficient. We also outline a multivehicle test
bed and present several algorithms that address the problem of motion planning
under connectivity/sensing constraints and illustrate their applicability to
different scenarios.

Biography:

Rafael Fierro is an Associate Professor of the
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico
where he has been since 2007. He received a M.Sc. degree in control engineering
from the University of Bradford, England and a Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Texas-Arlington. Prior to joining UNM, he
held a postdoctoral appointment with the GRASP Lab at the University of
Pennsylvania and a faculty position with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Oklahoma State University. His research interests
include cooperative control of multi-agent systems, mobile sensor and robotic
networks, motion planning under sensing/communication constraints, multivehicle
coordination, cyber-physical systems, and dynamic information flow tracking in
computer security. He directs the Multi-Agent, Robotics, Hybrid and Embedded
Systems (MARHES) Laboratory. Rafael Fierro was the recipient of a Fulbright
Scholarship, a 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the 2007 ISA
Transactions Best Paper Award. He is serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE
Control Systems Magazine and IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and
Engineering.

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Additional Paper

$ 300

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