Talk of Prof. Lorenzo Marconi

Prof. Lorenzo Marconi
Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems
University of Bologna

Tuesday 2015-05-19 16:00
IST-Seminar-Room V2.268 - Pfaffenwaldring 9 - Campus Stuttgart-Vaihingen Room V2.268 - Pfaffenwaldring 9

Abstract

The talk deals with the problem of output regulation for a class of hybrid linear systems and exosystems whose state periodically jumps according to a known clock. In this framework we present a general method for the systematic design of robust internal model-based regulators by extending results that are known for continuous time systems. The internal model design procedure relies upon a notion of visibility of the so-called "hybrid steady-state generator” . The idea is to design an internal model that reproduces only the "visible part" of the hybrid steady-state generator by designing an asymptotic hybrid observer of the latter. What makes the problem interesting in the hybrid context is that there might be dynamics in the steady-state generator that are "invisible" during flows (and, as such, cannot be embedded in the internal model) but that become "visible" during jumps, thus having an effect in achieving the regulation property. This, in turn, asks for a truly hybrid design in the regulator. The general theory is then applied to the case of robust tracking of spline-based reference trajectories by showing how the latter can be thought of as being generated by hybrid linear exosystems. A practical example of robust tracking of a spline reference trajectory by a quadrotor is also presented.

Biographical Information

Lorenzo Marconi graduated in 1995 in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna. Since 1995 he has been with the Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems at University of Bologna, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in March 1998. From 1999 he has been an Assistant Professor in the same Department where is now Associate Professor since January 2005. He has held visiting positions at various academic/research international institutions. He is co-author of more than 200 technical publications on the subject of linear and nonlinear feedback design published on international journals, books and conference proceedings. In 2005, he received the ``Outstanding Application Paper Award'' from the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for a co-authored paper published on Automatica. He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award for the best paper published on the magazine in the period 2012-2013. He is the chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on ``Nonlinear Control Systems''. He is the coordinators of the European Projects AIRobots (Innovative aerial service robots for remote inspections by contact, www.airobots.ing.unibo.it) and SHERPA (Smart collaboration between Humans and ground-aErial Robots for imProving rescuing activities in Alpine environments, www.sherpa-project.eu) both funded by the European Community within the 7th FP. His current research interests include nonlinear control, output regulation, control of autonomous vehicles, fault detection and isolation, fault tolerant control.