Seminars

Abstract: The talk is based on recent research by the speaker and his students/collaborators into drift counteraction optimal control and into model predictive control (MPC). These topics are motivated to a large extent by spacecraft control applications.  Drift counteraction optimal control involves maximizing the time or yield before a system violates prescribed constraints. Such constraints may be dictated by limited resources, system safety, operating limits and/or efficiency requirements.  The problems of this kind emerge, in particular, when one wishes to extend system operating life, for instance, of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite, a Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite or of a spacecraft imaging mission despite reaction wheel failures.  Model Predictive Control (MPC) leads to algorithmically defined nonlinear feedback laws for systems with pointwise-in-time state and control constraints which are defined by solutions to appropriately posed dynamic optimization problems that are (typically) solved online.    The talk will include an overview of recent research into MPC for drift counteraction, for minimum-time problems and into computational strategies for solving MPC problems (which could also be exploited in conventional trajectory optimization problems).  These strategies, among others, include Newton-Kantorovich inexact methods, sensitivity-based warmstarting which exploits predicting changes to a parameterized optimal control problem based on semiderivative of the solution mapping, improvements to semismooth methods for solving convex quadratic programs, and semismooth predictor-correct methods for suboptimal MPC. Potential for impact on applications in the area of spacecraft control will be discussed. 

Bio: Professor Ilya V. Kolmanovsky has received his Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1995, his M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1993 and his M.A. degree in Mathematics in 1995, all from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is presently a full professor with tenure in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. Professor Kolmanovsky’s research interests are in control theory for systems with state and control constraints, and in control applications to aerospace and automotive systems.  Before joining the University of Michigan in January 2010, Kolmanovsky was with Ford Research and Advanced Engineering in Dearborn, Michigan for close to 15 years. He is a Fellow of IEEE, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, a recipient of the 2002 Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, of 2002 and 2016 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Awards, of SICE Technology Award, and of several awards of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering.  He has co-authored over 150 journal articles and over 300 refereed conference papers.  He is also an inventor whose record includes over a hundred of granted United States patents.