Research
My research is centered around the analysis and control of spatially-distributed systems. Applications of these systems span the areas from power systems to satellite constellations to bio-inspired soft-robotics. I develop theory to characterize performance bounds, structural properties, and inherent tradeoffs in these systems to guide controller design and system co-design.
Motivation and Overview: There has been a recent shift toward utilizing the collaborative effort of a large number of distributed devices to achieve a task that was previously achieved by a single system. With continued increase in the availability of cheap and small sensors, actuators, and computing capabilities, the main limitation in this setting becomes the computation and communication bottlenecks among this large number of spatially distributed devices. Consider a group of small satellites that cooperates to maintain a desired configuration. Constant communication between each satellite and a ground station on earth quickly becomes intractable as the number of satellites or distance from Earth increases. Distributed architectures across application areas naturally induce their own inherent challenges. Specific problems along these lines that my research addresses are: (1) development of methods for controller design that account for component failures, (2) characterization of control policies that utilize only spatially nearby sensor measurements to compute a local actuation signal, and (3) characterization of tradeoffs between communication and memory in distributed controller implementations.
Research Approach: Given the diversity of applications with distributed structures, it is beneficial to address these challenges from a systematic perspective. My research develops a mathematical framework to develop analytic expressions that characterize inherent properties of distributed systems, such as bounds on achievable performance. These analytic formulas reveal relationships from the system parameters to the resulting control and communication structure, which guide future design choices. This viewpoint enables my work to complement that of more application specific research and creates opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations.
A list of all my publications is available on my Google Scholar page:
Here are links to some recent publications my work has contributed to:
Information Structures of the Kalman Filter for the Elastic Wave Equation