Optimal Synthesis of Fixed-Structure Embedded Optimization-Based Controllers

Release Time:2019-04-02Number of visits:460

Speaker:    Prof.Colin Neil Jones

Time:        16:00-17:00, Apr. 3

Location:    SIST 1A 212

Host:        Prof. Boris Houska

Abstract:

The field of fast-MPC, or the use of embedded optimization for high speed control, is a rapidly growing field in academia and increasingly in industry. Achieving the required extremely high speed optimization, often within micro-seconds, on low-end embedded platforms calls for a wide range of heuristic procedures for both the control design, as well as in the implementation of the optimization algorithms themselves. This semi-heuristic process leads to complex control laws that can be very efficient, but that are also extremely difficult to tune and design. This talk will introduce a framework for the non-conservative analysis of many of the heuristics used in these controllers via a convex sum-of-squares approach. We will then build on this framework to develop a formal optimal synthesis procedure for very high-speed embedded optimization-based control laws, and give a number of examples.

  

Bio: 

Colin Jones has been an Associate Professor in the Automatic Control Laboratory at the EPFL in Switzerland since 2017 and an assistant professor from 2011. He was a Senior Researcher at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich until 2010 and obtained a Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Cambridge for his work on polyhedral computational methods for constrained control. Prior to that, he was at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he took his bachelor and master degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. He is the author or coauthor of more than 170 publications including book chapters, journal papers, and conference proceedings and was awarded an ERC starting grant to study the optimal control of building networks. His current research interests are in the areas of high-speed predictive control and optimization, as well as the control of green energy generation, distribution and management.

SIST-Seminar 18139