DCL Seminar Series: Takashi Tanaka "Feedback Control with Minimum Directed Information"

Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor: Decision and Control Laboratory
Location: B02 CSL Auditorium
Date: November 7, 2018 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Speaker: Assistant Professsor Takashi Tanaka, University of Texas at Austin
Cost
Registration
Contact: Angie Ellis
Email: amellis@illinois.edu
Phone: 217-300-1910

Decision and Control Laboratory Lecture Series

Coordinated Science Laboratory

Feedback Control with Minimum Directed Information

Takashi Tanaka

Assistant Professor

Department of Aerospace Engineering and

Engineering Machenics

University of Texas at Austin

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

CSL Auditorium (B02)

Title: Feedback Control with Minimum Directed Information

Abstract:

Directed information is an information-theoretic measure that can be interpreted as a directional information flow between random processes. The concept has been broadly used in causality analysis, as well as in the analysis of communication systems with feedback. In this talk, we discuss the fundamental trade-off between the best achievable control performance and the required feedback directed information, which turns out to be a central mathematical question in some engineering (e.g., networked control systems) and scientific (e.g., non-equilibrium thermodynamics) research domains. We discuss numerical solution algorithms, including (i) the semidefinite programming approach for linear-quadratic-Gaussian systems, and (ii) the forward-backward Arimoto-Blahut iteration for finite state systems. Emerging applications as well as open research questions are discussed. We also discuss control-communication co-design problems for multi-agent coordination based on information regularization.

Bio:

Takashi Tanaka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Tokyo in 2006, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UIUC in 2009 and 2012, all in Aerospace Engineering. Prior to joining UT Austin, he held postdoctoral researcher positions at MIT and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His research interests include control, optimization, game theory, information theory, and their applications to distributed decision-making problems.