Mechanical Systems Control Lab

About Us

The recent research of MSC lab has focused on intelligent/autonomous mechanical systems and their interaction with humans from manufacturing (industrial robots) to transportation (autonomous driving) with synergies between model-based control methodologies with machine learning.

Recent Awards

  • Graduation 2013

    Congratulations to the new Doctors from the MSC Lab: Mike Chan, Evan Chang-Siu, and Xu Chen. Also congratulations to Junkai Lu and Hiroshi Niki for their completion of the Masters program. (Photo credits: Xu Chen and Zhanzhan Jia)

    graduation 2013

    May 19, 2013

  • Cal Day 2013

    The MSC Lab welcomed many visitors on Cal Day! (Photo credits: Chen-Yu Chan)

    2013 cal day

    April 19, 2013

  • Lifetime Achievement Award

    We are very pleased to announce that Prof. Tomizuka has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the IFAC Technical Committee on Mechatronic Systems! Additionally, our lab has two best student paper finalists at the 6th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems. Congratulations to Prof. Tomizuka, Cong Wang, Chung-Yen Lin, Junkai Lu, and Wenjie Chen!

    The Tomi "family" at the conference:

    Mechatronics13

    (Pictured from left to right. Front row: Kyoungchul Kong, Bin Yao, Tsu-Chin Tsao, Jun Ho Oh, Masayoshi Tomizuka, Roberto Horowitz, Doyoung Jeon, George T.-C. Chiu. Middle row: Hyunjin Choi, Eunyoung Baek, Wenjie Chen, Xu Chen, Taejin Jung. Back row: Cong Wang, Kan Kanjanapas, Junkai Lu, Wenlong Zhang, Yizhou Wang. Photo credit: Kan Kanjanapas.)

    April 14, 2013

  • DSCC 2012 Best Papers

    We are pleased to announce that Wenjie Chen, Xu Chen, and Yizhou Wang have all had their papers selected as "Best Paper in Session" from DSCC 2012. Congratulations to Wenjie, Xu, and Yizhou!

    March 13, 2013

  • Prof. Bhattacharyya PID Controls Seminar

    Prof. Bhattacharyya begins his four-part seminar on PID control today. The details of his seminar series is below:

    A Short Course on Modern PID Control

    By Prof. Shankar P. Bhattacharyya

    Abstract

    In this course we describe recent results on PID control that describe a new approach to design. Specifically we develop procedures to compute the complete stabilizing set. This is based on fundamental new results on root counting based on the Hermite-Bieler Theorem and its generalization. The computational algorithm that results is a linear programming problem with a nesting parameter. The stabilizing sets are shown to have certain convexity properties in specific directions. This computation opens up the possibility of carrying out design to satisfy multiple specifications. The results are applicable to continuous time systems with and without delays, and to discrete time systems. In addition it is shown that they also allow design for a plant described by frequency response measurements without first developing an identified model.

    Lecture Slides

    Bio

    S.P. Bhattacharyya is the Robert M. Kennedy Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A & M University. He received the B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Bombay in 1967, and the MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas in 1969 and 1971 respectively. He is an IEEE Fellow, an IFAC Fellow and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He has coauthored 7 books, over 100 journal publications and 250 conference publications in the field of Control Theory. He is also an accomplised concert artist and plays Indian Classical Music on the Sarode internationally.

    March 10, 2013


Research Update