Professor
Ioannis Kanellakopoulos
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles
USA
Application-oriented projects include active suspensions and automated commercial heavy vehicles. These systems contain smooth nonlinearities (hydraulic load flow, aerodynamic drag), which can be handled easily by existing design methodologies such as backstepping. The main obstacles to successful control design, however, are the severe limitations imposed by actuator saturation and large delays, especially in the brake systems of heavy-duty trucks. In response to these challenges, we developed new control designs which exploit the flexibility of backstepping to allow (a) the formulation of nonlinear performance objectives to accommodate saturations, and (b) the use of nonlinear predictors to counteract the delays. Combined with on-line adaptation, these modifications broaden the range of real-life systems that can be effectively controlled over large operating regions.
For more information on these projects, visit the Website of the Adaptive and Nonlinear Systems Laboratory at UCLA (http://ansl.ee.ucla.edu).