Robust control of ill-conditioned plants: high-purity distillation

Using a high-purity distillation column as an example, the physical reason for the poor conditioning and its implications on control system design and performance are explained. It is shown that an acceptable performance/robustness tradeoff cannot be obtained by simple loop-shaping techniques (using singular values) and that a good understanding of the model uncertainty is essential for robust control system design. Physically motivated uncertainty descriptions (actuator uncertainties) are translated into the H∞/structured singular value framework, which is demonstrated to be a powerful tool to analyze and understand the complex phenomena

Stochastic Stability Analysis of Discrete Time System Using Lyapunov Measure

In this paper, we study the stability problem of a stochastic, nonlinear, discrete-time system. We introduce a linear transfer operator-based Lyapunov measure as a new tool for stability verification of stochastic systems. Weaker set-theoretic notion of almost everywhere stochastic stability is introduced and verified, using Lyapunov measure-based stochastic stability theorems. Furthermore, connection between Lyapunov functions, a popular tool for stochastic stability verification, and Lyapunov measures is established. Using the duality property between the linear transfer Perron-Frobenius and Koopman operators, we show the Lyapunov measure and Lyapunov function used for the verification of stochastic stability are dual to each other. Set-oriented numerical methods are proposed for the finite dimensional approximation of the Perron-Frobenius operator; hence, Lyapunov measure is proposed. Stability results in finite dimensional approximation space are also presented. Finite dimensional approximation is shown to introduce further weaker notion of stability referred to as coarse stochastic stability. The results in this paper extend our earlier work on the use of Lyapunov measures for almost everywhere stability verification of deterministic dynamical systems ("Lyapunov Measure for Almost Everywhere Stability", {\it IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control}, Vol. 53, No. 1, Feb. 2008).Comment: Proceedings of American Control Conference, Chicago IL, 201

Evolutionary model type selection for global surrogate modeling

Due to the scale and computational complexity of currently used simulation codes, global surrogate (metamodels) models have become indispensable tools for exploring and understanding the design space. Due to their compact formulation they are cheap to evaluate and thus readily facilitate visualization, design space exploration, rapid prototyping, and sensitivity analysis. They can also be used as accurate building blocks in design packages or larger simulation environments. Consequently, there is great interest in techniques that facilitate the construction of such approximation models while minimizing the computational cost and maximizing model accuracy. Many surrogate model types exist ( Support Vector Machines, Kriging, Neural Networks, etc.) but no type is optimal in all circumstances. Nor is there any hard theory available that can help make this choice. In this paper we present an automatic approach to the model type selection problem. We describe an adaptive global surrogate modeling environment with adaptive sampling, driven by speciated evolution. Different model types are evolved cooperatively using a Genetic Algorithm ( heterogeneous evolution) and compete to approximate the iteratively selected data. In this way the optimal model type and complexity for a given data set or simulation code can be dynamically determined. Its utility and performance is demonstrated on a number of problems where it outperforms traditional sequential execution of each model type

SOTER: A Runtime Assurance Framework for Programming Safe Robotics Systems

The recent drive towards achieving greater autonomy and intelligence in robotics has led to high levels of complexity. Autonomous robots increasingly depend on third party off-the-shelf components and complex machine-learning techniques. This trend makes it challenging to provide strong design-time certification of correct operation. To address these challenges, we present SOTER, a robotics programming framework with two key components: (1) a programming language for implementing and testing high-level reactive robotics software and (2) an integrated runtime assurance (RTA) system that helps enable the use of uncertified components, while still providing safety guarantees. SOTER provides language primitives to declaratively construct a RTA module consisting of an advanced, high-performance controller (uncertified), a safe, lower-performance controller (certified), and the desired safety specification. The framework provides a formal guarantee that a well-formed RTA module always satisfies the safety specification, without completely sacrificing performance by using higher performance uncertified components whenever safe. SOTER allows the complex robotics software stack to be constructed as a composition of RTA modules, where each uncertified component is protected using a RTA module. To demonstrate the efficacy of our framework, we consider a real-world case-study of building a safe drone surveillance system. Our experiments both in simulation and on actual drones show that the SOTER-enabled RTA ensures the safety of the system, including when untrusted third-party components have bugs or deviate from the desired behavior