Francesco Borrelli, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, has been named winner of the NSF CAREER Award.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Professor Borrelli was named winner for his project entitled, "Title Distributed Control and Constraints Satisfaction in Complex Networked Systems" (abstract below)

Francesco Borrelli received the `Laurea' degree in computer science
engineering in 1998 from the University of Naples `Federico II', Italy. In 2002 he received the PhD from the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH-Zurich, Switzerland. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of California at Berkeley, USA.

He is the author of more than fifty publications and in the field of
predictive control. He is author of the book Constrained Optimal Control of Linear and Hybrid Systems published by Springer Verlag and the winner of the `Innovation Prize 2004' from the ElectroSwiss Foundation. In 2008 he was appointed the chair of the IEEE technical committee on automotive control. His research interests include constrained optimal control, model predictive control and its application to advanced automotive control and energyefficient building operation.

Distributed Control and Constraints Satisfaction in Complex Networked Systems

Francesco Borrelli

Abstract

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to study the systematic analysis and design of distributed controllers that guarantee constraint satisfaction in large scale networked dynamical systems. The project will focus on networked systems where constraints have a fundamental role: their local violation can lead to a global network failure. For such class of systems the project will deliver a theory and algorithms for analyzing and designing in a systematic way distributed controllers which are predictive, model-based and explicitly take into account systems constraints. The concepts of “model-based predictions”, “communication of intent” and “coordination rules”, widely used in social and biological networks, will be the three key elements inmthe overall research project development which will be used to guarantee global feasibility, stability and robustness of the network.

The results of this research will provide a set of tools for the systematic analysis and design of distributed controllers with guarantees on performance and constraint satisfaction. This will eliminate the need of a lengthy and expensive trial and error design procedure required for achieving satisfactory performance and minimum constraint violation. Possible application areas include power networks, building management, homeland security, defense, transportation and environmental monitoring.

Graduate and undergraduate engineering students will benefit through classroom instruction, involvement in the research and the design of an experiment in the PI’s laboratory.

For more information, visit Professor Borrelli's research lab.