Newsletter June 2017

Message from the DISC office

Dear DISC member,

This Monday the last lecture of this year’s course program will take place. The courses were very well attended this year and we hope you found them useful to your research and your development as a scientist. Of course we are working on the new program and we will share some details in this newsletter. On July 3 the DISC Summer School will start and we are looking forward to this annual event!

Best regards,

Henk Nijmeijer,
scientific director

Martha Otte,
DISC secretariat

 

Upcoming DISC courses

The course program 2016-2017 is almost finished and we are working on the course program for 2017-2018. The program is not finalized but we can share the general outline with you. Please do keep in mind that this is all still tentative.

In the first trimester (start September) we plan to offer the courses “Model Reduction for Control based on Balanced Realizations” (Jacquelien Scherpen and Kenji Fujimoto); Adaptive Control (Simone Baldi and Pietro Tesi) and Linear Matrix Inequalities for Control (Siep Weiland and Roland Toth).

In the second trimester (Jan-March) we plan to offer “Mathematical Models of Systems” (Jan Willem Polderman and Harry Trentelman) ; Nonlinear Control Systems (Bayu Jayawardhana and Bart Besselink) and “Multi-agent Network Dynamics and Games” (Sergio Grammatica and Ming Cao).

In the third trimester (March-June) we plan to offer two of our evergreens: Design Methods for Control Systems (Maarten Steinbuch and Gjerrit Meinsma) and System Identification for Control (Paul Van den Hof and co-lecturer) .

DISC Summer School 2017

The invitation is aimed at research students, staff members, researchers and engineers engaged in the systems and control area. Distinguished speakers will each present a series of tutorial lectures.
Invitation
Program

Privacy, Safety, and Security in Large-Scale Cyber-Physical Systems

The increasing adoption of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and internet-of-things (IoT) introduces new control problems beyond the traditional tasks of stabilization and optimization. Some of the control challenges are related to the operation of future, highly interconnected CPS in a safety- or mission-critical environment, and to the protection of security and privacy where sensor and actuator data, and other control parameters are communicated in a networked CPS. Recent denial-of-service attacks to critical infrastructure and several accidents involving autonomous cars are some of the instances where new theoretical developments in the systems and control field are needed.

In this summer school program, we will present recent developments towards this endeavor and particular attention will be given to:

  • differential privacy concept in a control and networked systems context
  • analysis and design of resilient and secure control systems
  • safety control of CPS

The lectures contain both recent control theoretical development, as well as, applications.

 Lecturers

The program will consist of a number of international and national speakers. Keynote lectures will be given by:

  • Jerome Le Ny, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada
  • Fabio Pasqualetti, University of California, USA
  • Rafael Wisniewski, Aalborg University, Denmark
  • Yiannis Papadopoulos, University of Hull, United Kingdom
  • Henrik Sandberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

and complemented by talks given by various DISC lecturers:

  • Manuel Mazo, Delft University of Technology, NL
  • Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani, Delft University of Technology, NL
  • Claudio de Persis, University of Groningen, NL

 Registration

The registration fee, which includes full board and lodging, is

  •  950,- euro for DISC members (after May 1, 2017)
  • 1150,- euro for non-DISC members (after May 1, 2017)

For more information about the accommodation arrangements please refer to the website  https://disc.tudelft.nl/education/summer-school/summer-school-2017/

The school is limited to 45 participants based on a first-come first-serve policy. The registration deadline is June 19, 2017 (Early bird deadline May 1, 2017).

You can register at the following website: http://disc-courseplatform.nl. Non DISC members can also send an email to: secr@disc.tudelft.nl (Please mention your full name and university including address).

For further information, contact the DISC administrative office: Martha Otte (m.w.otte@tudelft.nl) or the organizers: Bayu Jayawardhana (b.jayawardhana@rug.nl); Ming Cao (m.cao@rug.nl) and Tamas Keviczky (t.keviczky@tudelft.nl)

Symposium and inaugural Lecture of Ralf Peeters at Maastricht University

On this occasion, a symposium will be organized in the morning and early afternoon, titled: “Mathematics in Knowledge Engineering and Data Science – Identifying Connections”.

Free registration and further details of the program and the venue are available at: http://mecgi.org/

The symposium has substantial systems theoretic content and includes speakers such as Paul van den Hof (TU/e), Siep Weiland (TU/e), Martine Olivi (INRIA, France), Bernard Hanzon (Cork, Ireland). Other speakers will address applications of signal processing and analysis in several areas of biomedicine.

Robert Babuska head of new department Cognitive Robotics at TU Delft

 

On 1 July the new Department of Cognitive Robotics (CoR) will open at the faculty 3mE of the TU Delft. This department will bring together important lines of research in the area of robotics from different 3mE departments in a single department. The department will be chaired by Robert Babuska.

CoR’s mission is to deliver excellent research in the area of machine perception, artificial intelligence, motion planning, dynamics, human-robot interaction and systems integration, with applications in robotics, the smart industry and intelligent vehicles. The research at CoR will implement new research methods in physical prototypes in order to provide realistic robotics solutions that can function in a complex human-inhabited environment.

The research will focus on (from left to right in the picture):

  • Learning and autonomous control (Robert Babuska)
  • Robot dynamics (Martijn Wisse)
  • Human-robot interaction (David Abbink)
  • Intelligent vehicles (Dariu Gavrila)

For more information, please visit the CoR website

New people

Hi, my name is Sebastian Trip and I recently joined the group of prof. Jacquelien Scherpen at the University of Groningen. My research will focus on the embedding and coordination of electric vehicles in an urban environment. Charging many vehicles simultaneously requires indeed smart strategies. Additionally, the abundance of batteries offer means to support the electricity network. Previously, I worked on the related topic of distributed control of smart girds, under the supervision of prof. Claudio De Persis and in collaboration with various researchers across Europe. My general research interest is the control of networked systems, with a particular focus on the interaction of the physical network with a digital control structure.

My name is Jaap Eising and I recently started my PhD project at the university of Groningen. Being not nearly as internationally oriented as most people in DISC seem to be, I grew up within 10 kilometers of Groningen and finished both my bachelors and masters degree in mathematics here, the latter in February 2017.
My masters programme​ was focused on algebra and geometry. This is perhaps a slightly odd background for pursuing a PhD in systems and control, but me and professor Camlibel are working on describing a geometric approach for the class of convex processes. This is a generalization of the geometric approach to linear systems theory. In particular non-strict (or state-constrained) processes are the focus of this research. Some of my less mathematical passions are reading, history, pub-quizzing (and pubs in general), playing drums and listening to ‘weird’ music.

Defenses

Delft University of Technology

Candiate: Anahita Jamshidnejad
Group: DCSC
Thesis: Efficient Predictive Model-Based and Fuzzy Control for Green Urban Mobility
Promotor: Prof.dr.ir. J. Hellendoorn and Prof. M. Papageorgiou
Date: 22-06-2017
Location: Aula Senaatszaal, Mekelweg 5
Time: 10.00

University of Groningen

Candidate: Noorma Megawati
Group: JBI
Thesis: “A geometric approach to differential-algebraic systems: from bisimulation to control by interconnection
Promotor: A.J. van der Schaft
Date: 15-09-2017
Location: Academiegebouw
Time: 11.00

Eindhoven University of Technology

Candidate:      M. Dorosti MSc.
Group:            Dynamics & Control
Thesis:             Reduced-order Model Updating: for Prediction of Performance Variables in Mechanical Structures
Promotor:        Prof.dr. H. Nijmeijer
Date:               June 14, 2017
Location:        TU/e, auditorium, Room 4
Time:               16h00

Candidate:      B.A. Khashooei MSc.
Group:            Control Systems Technology
Thesis:            Event-Triggered Control for Linear Systems with Performance and Rate Guarantees: An approximate     Dynamic Programming Approach
Promotor:        Prof.dr.ir. W.P.M.H. Heemels
Date:               June 20, 2017
Location:        TU/e, Auditorium, Room 4
Time:               16h00

 

Next issue of the newsletter

The next issue of this Newsletter will appear in July 2017.
We encourage contributors to provide newsworthy information. In principle, we intend to publish any message offered. However, we reserve the right to edit certain parts of a submission.
Please send your contributions to: m.w.otte@tudelft.nl