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

在当前和新兴的控制应用的大型、复杂和分布式系统中，需要考虑总体控制方案的特定结构。这种结构的动机是由一些实际的原因，其中包括成本和可靠性，这限制了一个单独的本地站如何与整个系统进行交互，它可以访问的信息的哪一部分，以及什么通信机制是到位的。主要研究人员最近的初步工作已经揭示了一系列丰富的此类问题。本研究将探讨控制系统在各种交互与信息传输限制下的性能本质与限制，并发展有效且系统的控制分析与综合方法。 除了理论和算法的发展，拟议的研究的一个主要目标是利用结构化控制设计方法的成像技术，利用微杠杆，特别是在原子力显微镜的背景下。 除了理论上的影响，所提出的研究的实践方面是相关的两亿美元的扫描探针行业。研究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针行业的密切联系，将促进专业知识和技术向该行业的转移。

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.