Distributed Control of Constrained Compartmental Systems, with Applications to Large-Scale Infrastructures

该项目的研究目标是开发新的线性分区网络系统的调节方法，该方法可以直接和联合地解决通常施加在这些系统上的物理和通信限制。隔室系统可以被认为是相互关联的储水池的集合，根据全局守恒定律交换某些物质的流动。由于这些物质代表一个物理量，如车辆的数量或流体的质量，因此这些调节方法必须能够产生所需的闭环系统行为，而不会产生要求这些变量变为负值的命令。此外，不同储油层之间的通信往往是有限的，因此命令必须仅基于本地测量来计算。所提出的方法建立在鲁棒和非线性控制理论的基础上，利用隔室系统的特殊结构使设计问题易于处理大问题，同时考虑了时变参数变化、随机扰动和不确定性。将特别关注这些方法在最近为国家空域系统和大规模重力驱动的灌溉网络中的空中交通流量提出的舱室模型中的设定点调节、输出跟踪和干扰抑制方面的应用。由于可以建模为分区系统的过程范围很广，我们预计拟议研究产生的工具除了灌溉网络和空中交通流量控制外，还将有助于许多重要的技术和社会应用。例子包括化学生产过程和一些分布式计算场景。技术成果将通过与NASA艾姆斯研究中心的密切合作在空中交通管制社区内传播。本科生将积极参与灌溉委员会灌溉模拟及其验证试验台的建设。这个试验台还将被用作教学设备，作为当地高中生关于节水挑战及其可能的工程解决方案的课程的一部分。

The research objective of this project is to develop novel regulation methods for linear compartmental networked systems, which can directly and jointly address the physical and communication constraints typically imposed on these systems. Compartmental systems can be thought of as a collection of interconnected reservoirs exchanging flows of some material according to global conservation laws.Because this material represents a physical quantity such as a number of vehicles or a mass of fluid these regulation methods must be able to generate the desired closed-loop behavior without producing commands requiring these variables to become negative. In addition, communication between various reservoirs is often limited, and the commands must thus be computed based on local measurements only. The proposed approach builds on tools from the theory of robust and nonlinear control, and exploits the particular structure of compartmental systems to make design problems tractable for large problems, while incorporating time-varying parameter variations, random perturbations, and uncertainties. Particular effort and attention will be focused on the application of these methods to set-point regulation, output tracking, and disturbance rejection in compartmental models recently proposed for air traffic flow in the National Airspace System and large-scale, gravity driven, irrigation networks. Due to the wide range of processes that can be modeled as compartmental systems, we expect the tools resulting from the proposed research to benefit many important technical and societal applications in addition to irrigation networks and air traffic flow control. Examples include chemical production processes and some distributed computing scenarios. The technical results will be disseminated within the air traffic control community through close collaboration with the NASA Ames research center. Undergraduatestudents will be actively involved in the construction of an Irrigation Board testbed for irrigation simulation and its validation. This testbed will also be used as a teaching device, as part of a course for local high school students on the challenges of waterconservation and its possible engineering solutions.