Collaborative Research: Structured Control Design and Applications to Microcantilever Based Imaging

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In large, complex and distributed systems of current and emerging control applications, there is a need of considering a specific structure for the overall control scheme. Such a structure is motivated by a number of practical reasons, among which are cost and reliability, that constrain how an individual local station interacts with the overall system, what part of information it has access to and what communication mechanism is in place.The control system design for optimal performance when structural constraints are resent, remains an open challenge to the control community. Recent preliminary work by the principal investigators has exposed a rich array of such classes of problems. The proposed research will investigate the nature and limitations of the control system performance in the presence of various interaction and information transmission constraints and develop effective and systematic control analysis and synthesis methodologies. In addition to the theoretical and algorithmic developments, a major objective of the proposed research is to utilize the structured control design methodologies for imaging technologies that utilize micro-cantilevers; particularly in the context of Atomic Force Microscopy. Apart from the theoretical impact, the practical aspects of the proposed research are relevant to the two hundred million dollar scanning probe industry. The experimental facilities available to the investigators will be used to demonstrate to the related industry the effectiveness of the proposed research. This aspect together with the close ties of the investigators to the scanning probe industry will spur the transfer of know how and technology to the industry.