Control
If it moves, we control it.
Our expertise in this area covers multivariable, nonlinear, optimal and model-predictive control theory, nonlinear estimation, nonlinear dynamical systems, and mechanical design. We conduct both fundamental and applied research targeting a wide range of applications including autonomous driving, factory automation and HVAC systems.
Quick Links
-
Researchers
Stefano
Di Cairano
Yebin
Wang
Karl
Berntorp
Mouhacine
Benosman
Scott A.
Bortoff
Rien
Quirynen
Avishai
Weiss
Ankush
Chakrabarty
Christopher R.
Laughman
Daniel N.
Nikovski
Diego
Romeres
Arvind
Raghunathan
Devesh K.
Jha
Marcel
Menner
Saleh
Nabi
Philip V.
Orlik
Abraham M.
Goldsmith
Marcus
Greiff
Jianlin
Guo
Chungwei
Lin
Matthew E.
Brand
Hongtao
Qiao
Koon Hoo
Teo
Toshiaki
Koike-Akino
Yanting
Ma
Abraham P.
Vinod
William S.
Yerazunis
Kyeong Jin
(K.J.)
Kim
Jinyun
Zhang
Petros T.
Boufounos
Hongbo
Sun
Anantaram
Varatharajan
-
Awards
-
AWARD Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications Date: August 26, 2020
Awarded to: Marcus Greiff, Anders Robertsson, Karl Berntorp
MERL Contacts: Karl Berntorp; Marcus Greiff
Research Areas: Control, Signal ProcessingBrief- Marcus Greiff, a former MERL intern from the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University, Sweden, won one of three 2020 CCTA Outstanding Student Paper Awards and the Best Student Paper Award at the 2020 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications. The research leading up to the awarded paper titled 'MSE-Optimal Measurement Dimension Reduction in Gaussian Filtering', concerned how to select a reduced set of measurements in estimation applications while minimally degrading performance, was done in collaboration with Karl Berntorp at MERL.
-
AWARD MERL Researcher Devesh Jha Wins the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 Date: October 10, 2019
Awarded to: Devesh Jha, Nurali Virani, Zhenyuan Yuan, Ishana Shekhawat and Asok Ray
MERL Contact: Devesh K. Jha
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, RoboticsBrief- MERL researcher Devesh Jha has won the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 for the paper entitled "Imitation of Demonstrations Using Bayesian Filtering With Nonparametric Data-Driven Models". This paper, published in a Special Commemorative Issue for Rudolf E. Kalman in the ASME JDSMC in March 2018, uses Bayesian filtering for imitation learning in Hidden Mode Hybrid Systems. This award is given annually by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of ASME to the authors of the best paper published in the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control during the preceding year.
See All Awards for MERL -
-
News & Events
-
NEWS MERL researchers win ASME Energy Systems Technical Committee Best Paper Award at 2022 American Control Conference Date: June 8, 2022
Where: 2022 American Control Conference
MERL Contacts: Ankush Chakrabarty; Christopher R. Laughman
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, OptimizationBrief- Researchers from EPFL (Wenjie Xu, Colin Jones) and EMPA (Bratislav Svetozarevic), in collaboration with MERL researchers Ankush Chakrabarty and Chris Laughman, recently won the ASME Energy Systems Technical Committee Best Paper Award at the 2022 American Control Conference for their work on "VABO: Violation-Aware Bayesian Optimization for Closed-Loop Performance Optimization with Unmodeled Constraints" out of 19 nominations and 3 finalists. The paper describes a data-driven framework for optimizing the performance of constrained control systems by systematically re-evaluating how cautiously/aggressively one should explore the search space to avoid sustained, large-magnitude constraint violations while tolerating small violations, and demonstrates these methods on a physics-based model of a vapor compression cycle.
-
NEWS MERL researchers presented 9 papers at the American Control Conference (ACC) Date: June 8, 2022 - June 10, 2022
Where: Atlanta, GA
MERL Contacts: Karl Berntorp; Scott A. Bortoff; Ankush Chakrabarty; Stefano Di Cairano; Christopher R. Laughman; Marcel Menner; Rien Quirynen; Abraham P. Vinod; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, OptimizationBrief- At the American Control Conference in Atlanta, GA, MERL presented 9 papers on subjects including autonomous-vehicle decision making and motion planning, realtime Bayesian inference and learning, reference governors for hybrid systems, Bayesian optimization, and nonlinear control.
See All News & Events for Control -
-
Internships
-
CA1795: Path Planning and Control for Autonomous Articulated Vehicles
MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to collaborate with multiple researchers on the implementation and experimental validation of algorithms for path/motion planning, optimal control and reference tracking in autonomous articulated vehicles. The ideal candidate has a background in either path planning or model predictive control (MPC) for autonomous (articulated) vehicles, and the candidate should be familiar with optimal control, vehicle dynamics, A* search, Matlab and Simulink, and C/C++ code generation. Any experience with dSPACE (e.g., MicroAutoBox or Scalexio) is a plus. MS or PhD students in control, robotics, electrical and mechanical, or related areas, are encouraged to apply. Start date for this internship is as soon as possible, and the expected duration is about 3-6 months.
-
MD1746: PWM inverter circuit design
MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on PWM inverter drive circuit design and fabrication. The ideal candidate would be a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering with solid research background in power electronics. Experience in PWM inverter design, switching loss estimation, and EMI is desired. The intern is expected to collaborate with MERL researchers to design, simulate, and fabricate circuits, carry out experiments, analyze experimental data, and prepare manuscripts for scientific publications. The total duration is 3 months.
-
CI1711: Advanced Network Design
MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to join the Signal Processing Group for a three month internship program. The ideal candidate will be expected to carry out research on network design and optimization methods including AI assisted networking. The candidate is expected to develop innovative network configuration technologies to support emerging IoT applications. The candidates should have knowledge of network technologies such as network slicing, software defined networking and/or semantic networking. Knowledge of the communication technologies such as 3GPP-5G or IEEE 802 WLAN/WPAN standards is a plus. Candidates in their junior or senior years of a Ph.D. program are encouraged to apply.
See All Internships for Control -
-
Recent Publications
- , "Location and Driver-Specific Vehicle Adaptation Using Crowdsourced Data", European Control Conference (ECC), DOI: 10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838135, July 2022, pp. 769-774.BibTeX TR2022-095 PDF
- @inproceedings{Menner2022jul,
- author = {Menner, Marcel and Ma, Ziyi and Berntorp, Karl and Di Cairano, Stefano},
- title = {Location and Driver-Specific Vehicle Adaptation Using Crowdsourced Data},
- booktitle = {European Control Conference (ECC)},
- year = 2022,
- pages = {769--774},
- month = jul,
- doi = {10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838135},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-095}
- }
- , "Bayesian Sensor Fusion of GNSS and Camera With Outlier Adaptation for Vehicle Positioning", International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), July 2022.BibTeX TR2022-093 PDF
- @inproceedings{Berntorp2022jul,
- author = {Berntorp, Karl and Greiff, Marcus and Di Cairano, Stefano},
- title = {Bayesian Sensor Fusion of GNSS and Camera With Outlier Adaptation for Vehicle Positioning},
- booktitle = {International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jul,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-093}
- }
- , "Dynamic Clustering for GNSS Positioning with Multiple Receivers", International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION), July 2022.BibTeX TR2022-094 PDF
- @inproceedings{Greiff2022jul,
- author = {Greiff, Marcus and Di Cairano, Stefano and Berntorp, Karl},
- title = {Dynamic Clustering for GNSS Positioning with Multiple Receivers},
- booktitle = {International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jul,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-094}
- }
- , "Auto-Tuning of Controller and Online Trajectory Planner for Legged Robots", IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2022.3185387, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 7802-7809, June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-085 PDF
- @article{Schperberg2022jun,
- author = {Schperberg, Alexander and Di Cairano, Stefano and Menner, Marcel},
- title = {Auto-Tuning of Controller and Online Trajectory Planner for Legged Robots},
- journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
- year = 2022,
- volume = 7,
- number = 3,
- pages = {7802--7809},
- month = jun,
- doi = {10.1109/LRA.2022.3185387},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-085}
- }
- , "Online Constrained Bayesian Inference and Learning of Gaussian-Process State-Space Models", American Control Conference (ACC), June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-066 PDF
- @inproceedings{Berntorp2022jun,
- author = {Berntorp, Karl and Menner, Marcel},
- title = {Online Constrained Bayesian Inference and Learning of Gaussian-Process State-Space Models},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-066}
- }
- , "Multi-stage Perception-aware Chance-constrained MPC with Applications to Automated Driving", American Control Conference (ACC), June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-062 PDF
- @inproceedings{Bonzanini2022jun,
- author = {Bonzanini, Angelo Domenico and Mesbah, Ali and Di Cairano, Stefano},
- title = {Multi-stage Perception-aware Chance-constrained MPC with Applications to Automated Driving},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-062}
- }
- , "Constrained Smoothers for State Estimation of Vapor Compression Cycles", American Control Conference (ACC), June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-063 PDF
- @inproceedings{Deshpande2022jun,
- author = {Deshpande, Vedang and Laughman, Christopher R. and Ma, Yingbo and Rackauckas, Chris},
- title = {Constrained Smoothers for State Estimation of Vapor Compression Cycles},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-063}
- }
- , "Local Eigenmotion Control for Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits", American Control Conference (ACC), June 2022.BibTeX TR2022-060 PDF
- @inproceedings{Elango2022jun,
- author = {Elango, Purnanand and Di Cairano, Stefano and Kalabic, Uros and Weiss, Avishai},
- title = {Local Eigenmotion Control for Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2022,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2022-060}
- }
- , "Location and Driver-Specific Vehicle Adaptation Using Crowdsourced Data", European Control Conference (ECC), DOI: 10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9838135, July 2022, pp. 769-774.
-
Videos
-
[MERL Seminar Series Spring 2022] RLMPC: An Ideal Combination of Formal Optimal Control and Reinforcement Learning?
-
[MERL Seminar Series Spring 2022] Exact Structural Analysis of Multimode Modelica Models
-
[MERL Seminar Series 2021] Use the [Magnetic] Force for Good: Sustainability Through Magnetic Levitation
-
Control of Mechanical Systems via Feedback Linearization Based on Black-Box Gaussian Process Models
-
Co-simulation of HVAC Equipment and Airflow
-
Modelica-Based Modeling and Control of a Delta Robot
-
Electric Satellite Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management by MPC
-
Towards Human-Level Learning of Complex Physical Puzzles
-
Cooperating Modular Goal Selection and Motion Planning for Autonomous Driving
-
Experimental Validation of Reachability-based Decision Making for Autonomous Driving
-
Particle filter-based planning demonstration using mini-cars
-
MPC control and particle filter-based planning demonstration using mini-cars
-
Fly Cut
-
HVAC Lab & Controls
-
MPC for Satellites
-
Car Path Planning
-
MPC for Laser Cutting
-
MERL Research on Autonomous Vehicles
-
-
Software Downloads
