Handling transients, constraints, and uncertainties in automotive systems

Abstract:

The presentation will touch upon several challenging automotive control problems, and on opportunities to use control theory, including model predictive, adaptive, nonlinear, robust and optimal control to address these problems. Engine control problems will be considered first, where fast transient dynamics, stringent performance and robustness requirements, time delays, and limited computing power complicate the effective control. Ways to address these problems based on the application of model predictive and of the adaptive control will be described. Then, intricacies in control of turbocharged gasoline and diesel engines will be discussed, including approaches to handle pointwise-in-time state and control constraints. The next part of the presentation will be concerned with the use of robust control for transmission control applications, and with the use of optimal control techniques for energy management in conventional and hybrid vehicles and for vehicle dynamics applications. Remarks will be made throughout on the role control is playing in these applications and on opportunities to use control theory advances. Finally, comments will be made on related aerospace control problems of more recent interest to the speaker.

Biography:

Dr. Ilya Kolmanovsky has received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering, and the M.A. degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1993, 1995, and 1995, respectively. Before becoming a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2010, Dr. Kolmanovsky was with Ford Motor Company for close to 15 years, where his most recent role was a Technical Leader in Powertrain Control and a manager of Modern Control Methods and Computational Intelligence group in Ford Research and Advanced Engineering. Between 2003 and 2009 Dr. Kolmanovsky was also an Adjunct Research Scientist with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Kolmanovsky has published over 200 refereed journal and conference articles on a spectrum of theoretical topics, and on a variety of automotive and aerospace control applications. He is named as an inventor on 82 United States patents. Dr. Kolmanovsky has been a recipient of several awards, including Donald P. Eckman Award of American Automatic Control Council, of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award and of several innovation and technical achievement awards at Ford Motor Company. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a member of IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors.