Nonlinear control systems group

Head of the research group
Keyword
non-linear control systems
autonomous vehicles
power systems
algebraic methods
Overview
The group is a leading Estonian research unit inautomatic control, focusing on nonlinear controlsystems, including also hybrid and time-delaysystems. The group has made a significantcontribution to the development of constructivealgebraic methods and the associated symbolicsoftware package NLControl, which supportsresearch, teaching and applications.A universal algebraic methodology has beendeveloped that simplifies the study of very different problems for nonlinear control systems fromunified perspective. The main idea is to constructsequences of subspaces (or submodules) of differential 1-forms that provide a lot of informationabout the structural properties of the system. Forinstance, an event-based resource-aware controlmethod based on the concept of differential flatness has been developed.Although the group is developing predominantlyapplication-independent general methods, theapplicability of which depends rather on thedynamic properties of mathematical models, we have recently focused on some carefully selectedapplications, some of which are addressed withinthe joint topics of the Estonian Centre for Excellence in Science (EXCITE), our group is part of.These include control of autonomous underwater vehicles and ionic polymer-metal compositeactuators. Within the last few years, specialattention has been paid to the study of practicalproblems arising in the limits of renewable energy integration, and determineing the possiblelimitations of distributed energy storage devicesin low inertia power systems utilizing methodsfrom optimal control theory.
Related department
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