Robust and Optimal Control of Spatially Interconnected Systems, With Application to Coordinated Vehicle Control

摘要

The research supported by this grant consisted of developing improved algorithms and theory for designing and analyzing robust control systems for spatially interconnected systems. There are many examples of such systems, including automated highway systems, airplane formation flight, satellite constellations, cross-directional control in paper processing applications, and micro-cantilever array control for massively parallel data storage. One can also consider lumped approximations of partial differential equations - examples include the deflection of beams, plates, and membranes, and the temperature distribution of thermally conductive materials. Spatially interconnected control systems were studied in the context of fractional transformations on temporal and spatial shift operators, leading to multidimensional system optimization. These techniques were tested in simulation, and on the Cornell Formation Flight test-bed, in order to assess the validity of these approaches and to motivate further research.