University of Georgia
Mathematics Department Colloquium
Jorge Cortés Monforte
University of Illinois
Monday, February 17, 2003
Geometric Methods for Control and Coordination of Autonomous Systems
Abstract: In this talk we present recent progress
on motion planning and control algorithms for single and multiple
vehicle systems. This work is motivated by applications to autonomous
robotic systems and mobile sensing networks. On the basis of our
approach is the idea of exploiting the geometric structures behind the
differential equations governing the evolution of mechanical control
systems. For single-input systems, we present results on
controllability, on series expansions describing the evolution of the
trajectories, and on averaging under high amplitude and high frequency
forcing. For multiple vehicle systems, we focus on decentralized
control laws for the coordination of networks performing spatially
distributed sensing tasks. The technical approach relies on a
collection of tools from Nonlinear Control Theory, Geometric
Mechanics, Nonsmooth Analysis and Distributed Algorithms.