CCNY Lecture Series on Computer Vision, Robotics and
Human-Computer
Interaction
Title:
Distributed Control: from Robots to Networks
Professor John T. Wen
Department of Electrical,
Computer, and Systems Engineering
Director, Center for
Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS)
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute
Date: April 3
(Mon)
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: EE Conference room, T-648
Abstract
Distributed control
occurs in nature such as the collaborative load
carrying in social insects and
formation flying in flocking birds, and man-made systems such as
congestion control in data networks,
power distribution in power systems, and collaborative transport and
assembly in team robots. It is
possible to achieve a common group objective without explicit
coordination and communication between
individual actions through indirect communications using feedback. In
this talk, we consider the
stability, performance, and robustness of several distributed control
examples: collaborative load
carrying by multiple robots, network flow regulation, and CDMA power
control. The main tool that we
use is the concept of passivity. Passivity is motivated by energy
conservation or dissipation in
physical systems and has long been used in the stability analysis and
design of nonlinear feedback
systems, including mechanical structures and electrical circuits. I
will review the passivity approach
and then present its applications to distributed control.
Biography
John Ting-Yung Wen received his B.Eng. from McGill University in 1979,
M.S. from University of
Illinois in 1981, and Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
1985, all in Electrical
Engineering. He worked on pulp and paper plant control at Fisher
Controls from 1981-1982. From
1985-1988, he was a member of technical staff at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory where he worked on
modeling and control for large space structures and space robots. Since
1988, he has been with
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he is currently a professor in
the Department of Electrical,
Computer, and Systems Engineering with a joint appointment in the
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace,
and Nuclear Engineering. He was an ASEE/NASA Summer Faculty Fellow in
1993, a Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science (JSPS) Senior Visiting Scientist in 1997. His
research interest lies in modeling,
control, and planning of dynamical systems with applications to
vibration suppression, robot
manipulation, biomedical systems, advanced material design, and network
flow and power control. Dr.
Wen is a Fellow of IEEE.
The
lecture series is supported by CCNY Grove School of Engineering, and
National Science Foundation.