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

该项目的研究目标是为线性隔室网络系统开发新的调节方法，这些方法可以直接和共同解决这些系统通常施加的物理和通信约束。隔室系统可以被认为是根据全局守恒定律交换某些物质流动的相互连接的水库的集合。由于这种材料代表一个物理量，例如车辆数量或流体质量，这些调节方法必须能够产生所需的闭环行为，而不产生要求这些变量变为负值的命令。此外，各个储层之间的通信通常是有限的，因此指令必须仅根据当地的测量来计算。所提出的方法建立在鲁棒和非线性控制理论的工具之上，并利用隔室系统的特殊结构，使设计问题易于处理，同时结合时变参数变化，随机扰动和不确定性。特别的努力和注意力将集中在这些方法在最近为国家空域系统和大型重力驱动灌溉网络的空中交通流量提出的分区模型中的设定点调节、输出跟踪和干扰抑制的应用上。由于可以作为分区系统建模的过程范围广泛，我们期望从拟议的研究中得到的工具除了灌溉网络和空中交通流量控制外，还能使许多重要的技术和社会应用受益。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界传播。本科生将积极参与灌溉模拟和验证的灌溉委员会试验台的建设。这个试验台也将被用作教学设备，作为当地高中生关于水资源保护挑战及其可能的工程解决方案课程的一部分。

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.