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

在当前和新兴控制应用的大型、复杂和分布式系统中，需要考虑总体控制方案的特定结构。这种结构的动机是许多实际原因，其中包括成本和可靠性，这些原因限制了单个本地站如何与整个系统交互，它可以访问哪些部分的信息，以及适当的通信机制。当结构约束重新出现时，控制系统设计的最佳性能仍然是控制社区面临的一个开放挑战。主要调查人员最近的初步工作暴露了一系列丰富的此类问题。这项研究将调查在各种相互作用和信息传输约束下控制系统性能的性质和限制，并开发有效和系统的控制分析和综合方法。除了理论和算法的发展外，拟议研究的一个主要目标是利用结构控制设计方法，用于利用微悬臂梁的成像技术，特别是在原子力显微镜的背景下。除了理论影响外，拟议研究的实践方面与2亿美元的扫描探头行业相关。调查人员可使用的实验设施将用于向相关行业展示拟议研究的有效性。这一方面，加上调查人员与扫描探头行业的密切联系，将推动专门知识和技术向该行业转让。

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.