DCL Lecture Series: Bassam Bamieh "Limits of Performance in Large-scale Networked Control Systems"

Decision and Control Laboratory

Coordinated Science Laboratory

Limits of Performance in Large-scale Networked Control Systems

Dr. Bassam Bamieh

University of California, Santa Barbara

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

3:00pm – 4:00pm

CSL Auditorium (B02)

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Abstract:

The question of how difficult or easy it is to control a certain network of interconnected dynamical agents is fundamental to understanding engineered or naturally occurring networks, such as vehicular formations or  power grids amongst many others. I will argue that standard notions of stability and controllability as binary properties (e.g. a system is either stable or not), convergence rates, or even reachability analysis may fail to predict the behavior of large networks. These apparent difficulties motivate a notion of network controllability based on hard limits of performance in optimal and robust control problems with structural constraints. While such problems are known to be generally intractable, I will show certain examples  where informative and simple answers are possible in the asymptotic limit of large system size. Some interesting fragilities of certain networks emerge in the large system size limit.  Connections between these results and the statistical mechanics of disordered media will be highlighted. I will also summarize some recent results on optimal, structured controller design that aim at addressing these difficulties in a systematic manner.

Bio: Bassam Bamieh is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research interests are include robust, optimal and distributed control, shear flow transition and turbulence, and the use of active control in thermoacoustic energy conversion devices. He is a past recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the AACC Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award,  and the IEEE Control Systems Society G. S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award (twice). He is a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) , and a Fellow of the IEEE.