CAREER: Control Design of Complex Engineering Systems

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ECS-9875244DullerudComplexity is increasingly a major and central issue in the design of high performance engineering systems. The enormous complexity of most systems in engineering is partially due to the long recognized fact that even relatively simple physical systems can exhibit very complex and subtle behavior, but is more directly attributable to the growth of systems by interconnecting many heterogeneous subsystems. This growing trend, fueled by the rapid development of physical components and computing capability, seems to be accelerating. While systems are becoming more and more complex, expectations on the level of system performance are increasing. This poses a central design challenge for complex systems engineering as the behavior of such systems are inherently uncertain. In addition to dealing with the more complicated and subtle nonlinear behavior of complex dynamical systems, control and systems methods for current and future engineering must necessarily contend with the issues of incomplete or uncertain models and information. At the same time they must be computationally tractable.The long term objective of the PI's research program is the development of advanced control and dynamical analysis methods that are directly applicable to nonlinear complex systems. The research plan of this proposal describes some innovative and substantial steps that the PI will take in this direction, together with an integrated program for both graduate and undergraduate education. The major research contributions of the proposed program will be in three main areas, The first area is construction of analysis and synthesis tools for the control of complex nonlinear systems along trajectories, and more general nonlinear control approaches. The second area is the verification of uncertain nonlinear models from experimentally obtained data; this is important because exact first principles modeling of complex systems is not possible, and so direct comparison with data is crucial. The final area is the investigation of specialized control strategies that are required for "systems comprised of systems" and can be exploited more generally with the appearance of new actuation technology; specifically distributed control methods will be pursued. The program proposed here emphasizes new theory and the development of analytical methods, however the creation of computational algorithms and the completion of general reuseable software are major objectives of the program; this will make the ideas and tools of the program immediately available to practitioners and industry. The program will use a combination of nonlinear, robust and numerical tools. Semi-definite programming will form a basis for much of the optimization work in the program, and direct contributions to domain specific optimization is considered a secondary aim of the program. To complement the proposed program, planned experimental facilities exhibiting complex behavior will be used to critically evaluate and partially direct this analytical program.The research program is at the confluence of dynamical systems and control theory, control applications, and numerical simulation and optimization. Both graduate and undergraduate education are integrated in the research program; students involved with the program will gain considerable research experience, making their engineering background broader and their research capabilities stronger. The education plan specifically includes the involvement of undergraduates in research through a variety of specially selected projects, including optimization tools, web-based education software, and experiment construction projects