January 21, 2015, ESB 2001

In this talk, an overview of recent advances in nonlinear control based on dynamic high-gain scaling based design will be presented. This design technique has been shown to be a highly flexible design methodology providing a unified framework for both state-feedback and output-feedback control of nonlinear systems of both lower triangular (feedback) and upper triangular (feedforward) structures and also to some systems without any triangularity properties. Furthermore, the design paradigm provides considerable robustness to parametric uncertainties, appended dynamics, and additive noise disturbances. The technique can be extended to adaptive and robust frameworks and also to decentralized control of large-scale systems and delayed systems as well as handling input unmodelled dynamics. A central ingredient in the dynamic high-gain scaling based design is the solution of particular pairs of coupled Lyapunov inequalities. An overview of other ongoing research activities at CRRL will also be presented. These include applications to control of autonomous unmanned vehicles such as rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, sea vehicles, and humanoids. Our efforts in path planning and obstacle voidance for autonomous unmanned vehicles will be outlined.

Farshad Khorrami received his Bachelors degrees in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering in 1982 and 1984 respectively from The Ohio State University. He also received his Master's degree in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1984 and 1988 from The Ohio State University. Dr. Khorrami is currently a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at NYU where he joined as an assistant professor in Sept. 1988. His research interests include adaptive and nonlinear controls, robotics and automation, unmanned vehicles (fixed-wing and rotary wing aircrafts as well as underwater vehicles and surface ships), smart structures, large-scale systems and decentralized control, smart grid, and microprocessor based control and instrumentation. Prof. Khorrami has published more than 230 refereed journal and conference papers in these areas. His book on "modeling and adaptive nonlinear control of electric motors" was published by Springer Verlag in 2003. He also has twelve U.S. patents on novel smart micro-positioners and actuators, control systems, and wireless sensors and actuators. He has developed and directed the Control/Robotics Research Laboratory at Polytechnic Univrsity (Now NYU). His research has been supported by the Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, DARPA, Sandia National Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, NASA, and several corporations. Prof. Khorrami has served as general chair and conference organizing committee member of several international conferences.