- Date: February 4, 2019
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman is a guest editor of a special issue on Learning-based Adaptive Control: Theory and Application, recently published by the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. Other guest editors included Professor F.L. Lewis (University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute), Professor M. Guay (Queen's University), and Professor D. Owens (The University of Sheffield).
The special issue presents results of current research on learning-based adaptive methods, merging together model-based and data-driven machine learning approaches.
More information on the content of this special issue can be found at:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991115/2019/33/2
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- Date: February 1, 2019
Where: WPI
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman has been invited to give a talk at the Aerospace Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on Lyapunov-based model reduction and stabilization of PDEs, with application to the Boussinesq equation. Further details of the talk can be found in the below link.
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- Date: January 10, 2019
Where: Tokyo, Japan
MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Rui Ma; Philip Orlik; Koon Hoo Teo
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, Electric Systems
Brief - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced today its development of the world's first ultra-wideband digitally controlled gallium nitride (GaN) amplifier, which is compatible with a world-leading range of sub-6GHz bands focused on fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems. With a power efficiency rating of above 40%, the amplifier is expected to contribute to large-capacity communication and reduce the power consumption of mobile base stations.
MERL and Mitsubishi Electric researchers collaborated to develop digital control methods for amplifiers achieving high-efficiency of 40% and above, with 110% of the fractional bandwidth over frequency range 1.4-4.8 GHz. The digital control signals are designed using a learning-function based on Maisart®.
Please see the link below for the full Mitsubishi Electric press release text.
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- Date: November 1, 2018
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Wiley has recently launched the Journal of Advanced Control for Applications: Engineering and Industrial Systems, which seeks original and high-quality contributions on the design of advanced control for applications. The aim is to stimulate the adoption of new and improved control design methods and provide a forum for the discussion of control application problems. Papers for the journal must include sufficient novelty in either the control design methods, the modelling and simulation techniques used, or the applications studied. MERL researcher, Mouhacine Benosman, has been invited to join the Editorial Board of this new journal.
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- Date: March 19, 2018
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman Brief - MERL researcher Mouhacine Benosman has been appointed as a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing.
The International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing is concerned with the design, synthesis and application of estimators or controllers where adaptive features are needed to cope with uncertainties.
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- Date: February 14, 2018
Where: Tokyo, Japan
MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Rui Ma; Yukimasa (Yuki) Nagai; Philip Orlik; Koon Hoo Teo
Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Signal Processing, Electric Systems
Brief - MERL machine learning power amplifier and all-digital transmitter technologies that enable future intelligent wireless communications were reported at a recent press release event in Tokyo. Please see the link below for the full Mitsubishi Electric press release text.
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- Date: November 27, 2017
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman Brief - MERL researcher Mouhacine Benosman has been appointed as a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (JOTA).
The Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications publishes carefully selected papers covering mathematical optimization techniques and their applications to science and engineering. An applications paper should be as much about the application of an optimization technique as it is about the solution of a particular problem.
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- Date: May 24, 2017 - May 26, 2017
MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Daniel Burns; Claus Danielson; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith; Uroš Kalabić; Saleh Nabi; Daniel Nikovski; Arvind Raghunathan; Yebin Wang
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning
Brief - Talks were presented by members of several groups at MERL and covered a wide range of topics:
- Similarity-Based Vehicle-Motion Prediction
- Transfer Operator Based Approach for Optimal Stabilization of Stochastic Systems
- Extended command governors for constraint enforcement in dual stage processing machines
- Cooperative Optimal Output Regulation of Multi-Agent Systems Using Adaptive Dynamic Programming
- Deep Reinforcement Learning for Partial Differential Equation Control
- Indirect Adaptive MPC for Output Tracking of Uncertain Linear Polytopic Systems
- Constraint Satisfaction for Switched Linear Systems with Restricted Dwell-Time
- Path Planning and Integrated Collision Avoidance for Autonomous Vehicles
- Least Squares Dynamics in Newton-Krylov Model Predictive Control
- A Neuro-Adaptive Architecture for Extremum Seeking Control Using Hybrid Learning Dynamics
- Robust POD Model Stabilization for the 3D Boussinesq Equations Based on Lyapunov Theory and Extremum Seeking
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- Date: July 6, 2016 - July 8, 2016
Where: American Control Conference (ACC)
MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Scott Bortoff; Petros Boufounos; Daniel Burns; Claus Danielson; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith; Piyush Grover; Uroš Kalabić; Christopher Laughman; Daniel Nikovski; Arvind Raghunathan; Yebin Wang; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Data Analytics
Brief - The premier American Control Conference (ACC) takes place in Boston July 6-8. This year MERL researchers will present a record 20 papers(!) at ACC, with several contributions, especially in autonomous vehicle path planning and in Model Predictive Control (MPC) theory and applications, including manufacturing machines, electric motors, satellite station keeping, and HVAC. Other important themes developed in MERL's presentations concern adaptation, learning, and optimization in control systems.
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- Date: March 14, 2016 - March 18, 2016
Where: Institute for Mathematics and its Applications
MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
Research Area: Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman will give an invited talk about reduced order models stabilization at the next IMA workshop 'Computational Methods for Control of Infinite-dimensional Systems'.
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- Date & Time: Friday, October 18, 2013; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Dr. Shreyas Sundaram, University of Waterloo
MERL Host: Mouhacine Benosman Brief 
This talk will describe a method to stabilize a plant with a network of resource-constrained wireless nodes. As opposed to traditional networked control schemes where the nodes simply route information to and from a dedicated controller, our approach treats the network itself as the controller. Specifically, we formulate a strategy where each node repeatedly updates its state to be a linear combination of the states of neighboring nodes. We show that this causes the entire network to behave as a linear dynamical system, with sparsity constraints imposed by the network topology. We provide a numerical design procedure to determine the appropriate linear combinations for each node so that the transmissions of the nodes closest to the actuators are stabilizing. We also make connections to decentralized control theory and the concept of fixed modes to provide topological conditions under which stabilization is possible. We show that this "Wireless Control Network" requires low computational and communication overhead, simplifies transmission scheduling, and enables compositional design. We also consider the issue of security in this control scheme. Using structured system theory, we show that a certain number of malicious or misbehaving nodes can be detected and identified provided that the connectivity of the network is sufficiently high.
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- Date & Time: Wednesday, June 26, 2013; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Gabriel Rodrigues de Campos, Chalmers University
MERL Host: Mouhacine Benosman Brief 
In this talk, we consider a scenario where several vehicles have to coordinate among them in order to cross a traffic intersection. Thus, the control problem relies on the optimization of global cost function while guaranteeing collision avoidance and the satisfaction of local constraints. We propose a decentralized solution, where vehicles sequentially solve local optimization problems allowing them to cross, in a safe way, the intersection. Such approach pays a special attention to how quantify the degrees of freedom that each vehicle disposes to avoid a potential collision and lead to an adequate formalism in which collision avoidance is enforced through local state constraints at given time instants. Finally, simulations results on the efficiency, performance and optimality of the proposed approach are presented at the end of the talk.
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