April 01, 2022, zoom / ECE 4164

This talk will start with a short overview of control flexible aircraft. The motivation is that more fuel efficient aircraft designs lead to increased flexibility. Active feedback control can be used to damp the effects of this increased flexibility. The approach is model-based and relies on standard methods for design and analysis. This motivates the trend toward non-traditional control architectures including neural networks, real-time optimization, and adaptive control. Some initial results will be given for these problems. For example, existing robust control methods can be used to assess stability and robustness of feedback loops that use neural networks. Possible extensions to other non-traditional control architectures will also be discussed.

Dr. Laurel Riek is a professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, with a joint appointment in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and is affiliated with the Contextual Robotics Institute and Design Lab. Dr. Riek directs the Healthcare Robotics Lab and leads research in human-robot teaming and health informatics, with a focus on autonomous robots that work proximately with people. Riek's current research interests include long term learning, robot perception, and personalization; with applications in acute care, neurorehabilitation, and home health. Dr. Riek received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and B.S. in Logic and Computation from Carnegie Mellon. Riek served as a Senior Artificial Intelligence Engineer and Roboticist at The MITRE Corporation from 2000-2008, working on learning and vision systems for robots, and held the Clare Boothe Luce chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame from 2011-2016. Dr. Riek has received the NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR Young Investigator Award, Qualcomm Research Award, and was named one of ASEE's 20 Faculty Under 40. Dr. Riek is the HRI 2023 General Co-Chair and served as the Program Co-Chair for HRI 2020, and serves on the editorial boards of T-RO and THRI.