学术报告第201729期

报告题目：Introduction to Cooperative Control for Synchronization in Nature and Engineering

报 告 人：Lewis，Frank Leroy教授（The University of Texas at Arlington, USA）

报告时间：2017年6月9日8：55

报告地点：东九楼D213

Abstract: Distributed systems of agents linked by communication networks only have access to information from their neighboring agents, yet must achieve global agreement on team activities to be performed cooperatively.  Examples include networked manufacturing systems, the global aircraft routing system, wireless sensor networks, networked feedback control systems, and the internet.  Sociobiological groups such as flocks, swarms, and herds have built-in mechanisms for cooperative control wherein each individual is influenced only by its nearest neighbors, yet the group achieves consensus behaviors such as heading alignment, leader following, exploration of the environment, and evasion of predators.  It is known that groups of fireflies and of crickets align their frequencies, neurons in the brain fall into patterns of interacting burst phenomena, and biological groups fall into the circadian rhythm.  It was shown by Charles Darwin that local interactions between population groups over long time scales lead to global results such as the evolution of species.

This talk explores the structure of complex distributed naturally occurring and human engineered systems.  We review the basic sorts of graphs including random, small world, and scale free.  It is shown how these notions can be used to design cooperative control systems for dynamical systems interacting on communication graph topologies. The fundamental ideas behind cooperative control for networked interacting teams are presented, including the graph Laplacian matrix, Fiedler eigenvalue, time to consensus, and consensus values reached.  Discussed are local voting protocols, second-order consensus, control of systems in formations, and synchronization of distributed interacting oscillators.  Local protocols based only on interactions between neighbors lead to global optimal behavior of distributed teams.  Results from graph theory show the importance of the communication structure on the agreement reached by the networked team.

Simulations are presented to show how these ideas about synchronization and cooperation capture the motions and vibrations we see around us every day in our daily lives.

Biosketch: Member, National Academy of Inventors. Fellow IEEE, Fellow IFAC, Fellow U.K. Institute of Measurement & Control, Fellow AAAS, PE Texas, U.K. Chartered Engineer. UTA Distinguished Scholar Professor, UTA Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Moncrief-O’Donnell Chair at The University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute.  Qian Ren Thousand Talents Consulting Professor, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. Foreign Expert Scholar, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer.  Bachelor's Degree in Physics/EE and MSEE at Rice University, MS in Aeronautical Engineering at Univ. W. Florida, Ph.D. at Ga. Tech.  He works in feedback control, reinforcement learning, intelligent systems, and distributed control systems.  He is author of 7 U.S. patents, 316 journal papers, 406 conference papers, 20 books, 48 chapters, and 12 journal special issues.  He received the Fulbright Research Award, NSF Research Initiation Grant, ASEE Terman Award, Int. Neural Network Soc. Gabor Award 2009, U.K. Inst. Measurement & Control Honeywell Field Engineering Medal 2009.  Received IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Neural Networks Pioneer Award 2012 and AIAA Intelligent Systems Award 2016.  Distinguished Foreign Scholar at Nanjing Univ. Science & Technology. Project 111 Professor at Northeastern University, China. Distinguished Foreign Scholar at Chongqing Univ. China. Received Outstanding Service Award from Dallas IEEE Section, selected as Engineer of the Year by Ft. Worth IEEE Section.  Listed in Ft. Worth Business Press Top 200 Leaders in Manufacturing. Received the 2010 IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award and the 2010 UTA Graduate Dean’s Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring Award. Elected to UTA Academy of Distinguished Teachers 2012.  Texas Regents Outstanding Teaching Award 2013. He served on the NAE Committee on Space Station in 1995.