### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Non-Markovian Quantum Feedback Networks

Séminaire le 30 Juin 2017, 11h00 à INRIA Paris (Salle A115)
John Gough (Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Aberystwyth University)

We will recall the theory of Markovian Quantum feedback Networks, and explain some recent models with non-Markovian behaviour coming from physical requirements.

The concept of a controlled flow of a dynamical system, especially when the controlling process feeds information back about the system, is of central importance in control engineering, and we build on the ideas of by Bouten and van Handel to develop a general theory of quantum feedback. We elucidate the relationship between the controlling processes Z and the measured process Y, and to this end make a distinction between what we call the input picture and the output picture.

The theory is general enough to include a modulating filter which processes the measurement readout Y before returning to the system. This opens up the prospect of applying very general engineering feedback control techniques to open quantum systems in a systematic manner, and we consider a number of specific modulating filter problems.

Bio. John E. Gough was born in Drogheda, Ireland, in 1967. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mathematical Sciences and the Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Physics from the National University of Ireland, Dublin, in 1987, 1988 and 1992 respectively. He was reader in Mathematical Physics at the Department of Mathematics and Computing, Nottingham-Trent University, up until 2007. He then joined the Institute of Mathematics and Physics at Aberystwyth University as established chair of Mathematics. He has held visiting positions at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, EPFL Lausanne, UC Santa Barbara and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include quantum probability, measurement and control of open quantum dynamical systems, and quantum feedback networks.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du Plateau de Saclay : Quantum reservoir engineering to control light with atoms.

Séminaire le 20 Juin 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle des séminaires du L2S
Alain Sarlette (QUANTIC Lab, INRIA Paris & SYSTeMS research group, Ghent University)

This talk will give a simple introduction to a quantum stabilization technique called "reservoir engineering", which builds on the dissipation induced on a target system by its interaction with an open auxiliary system. We will introduce the technique, recall some older results obtained in our group and finally present our latest results in which we study the effect on the target system, of entanglement "in time" in the auxiliary system. This is joint work with my postdoc Zibo Miao.

Bio. Alain Sarlette has an engineering degree (applied physics) and a PhD (systems and control theory) from the University of Liège, Belgium. He has been a visiting researcher at Princeton University, Mines Paris-Tech, IIT Bombay among others. He is currently assistant professor at Ghent University (Belgium) and Senior Researcher (CR1) at INRIA Paris in the QUANTIC lab. His research interests include nonlinear and geometric control, coordination algorithms, and mainly algorithms and control for quantum technologies.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Some Mathematical and Numerical questions on the Lindblad equation. Application to Quantum Control.

Séminaire le 20 Juin 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle des séminaires du L2S
Claude Le Bris (Ecole des Ponts & Inria)

We overview a series of joint works with P. Rouchon (Mines de Paris) and other collaborators devoted to the mathematical analysis and the numerical simulation of high-dimensional Lindblad equations. These equations rule the time evolution of density matrices of open quantum systems. The numerical techniques we present aim
at adaptively constructing a low-rank approximation of the density matrices, deriving an evolution equation for this reduced model, and using it as a surrogate model for the original evolution. Alternately, using that reduced model, we also consider and improve advanced Monte-Carlo type techniques that simulate the stochastic system of equations equivalent to the Lindblad equation. The practically relevant setting where we test our approaches arises in stabilization/control problems for quantum optics and circuits. We believe that, interestingly, our approaches may be readily adapted to problems involving the simulation and control of the evolution of density matrices in other contexts.

Bio. Claude Le Bris is a civil engineer in chief, HdR from University Paris Dauphine. His applied mathematics works have primarily been devoted to the design and analysis of numerical approaches for Physics and Mechanics. He holds a research position at Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées. He is the scientific leader of the project-team  MATHERIALS at INRIA, the activity of which is focused on multiscale numerical simulation.

### Coded Caching in Wireless Networks

Séminaire le 19 Mai 2017, 09h30 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Meixia Tao

The global mobile data traffic has been shifting from voice and messages to rich content distributions, such as video streaming and application downloads. These contents are typically produced ahead of transmission and can be requested by multiple users though at possibly different times. By prefetching popular contents during off-peak times at the edge of wireless networks, such as small base stations, helper nodes, and user devices, wireless caching can alleviate peak-time network congestion and reduce user access latency. A fundamental question is what and how much gain can be leveraged by caching. In this talk, we shall investigate the gain of caching in two types of wireless networks. One is a general wireless interference network with arbitrary number of transmitters and arbitrary number of receives and with caches equipped at all the nodes. An information-theoretic study in terms of the storage-latency tradeoff will be presented. The other is a large-scale small-cell network where each small base station is equipped with a cache. We apply stochastic geometry to model, analyze, and optimize coded caching with performances characterized by average fractional offloaded traffic and average ergodic rate. Our study reveals several design insights of caching in practical wireless networks.

Bio: Meixia Tao received the B.S. degree from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2003. She is currently a Professor with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Prior to that, she was a Member of Professional Staff at Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute during 2003-2004, and a Teaching Fellow then an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore from 2004 to 2007. Her current research interests include content-centric wireless networks, wireless caching and multicasting, resource allocation, and interference coordination.

Dr. Tao is currently serving as a member of the Executive Editorial Committee of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications. Dr. Tao is the recipient of the IEEE Heinrich Hertz Award for Best Communications Letters in 2013 and the IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009. She also receives the best paper awards from IEEE/CIC ICCC 2015 and IEEE WCSP 2012.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Chance-constrained optimization with tight confidence bounds.

Séminaire le 25 Avril 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Mark Cannon (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford)

Optimization problems involving chance constraints, i.e. constraints on decision variables that are required to hold with given probability, occur in numerous engineering contexts, but have in particular contributed to developments in robust control design over the past decade. This talk will provide a new perspective on randomized methods for solving chance-constrained programming problems based on samples of uncertain parameters, and presents a theoretical framework for sampled convex programming that encompasses analyses of constraint discarding approaches and sequential sampling approaches. We show that tight bounds on the confidence of the solution of a sampled problem meeting chance constraints apply if a randomized sample discarding strategy is employed. This suggests a solution methodology which is both computationally convenient, being based on the solutions of convex sampled optimization problems, and efficient, requiring the solution of smaller numbers of problems than existing constraint discarding and sequential methods. We illustrate the method with examples from stochastic model predictive control design.

Bio. Mark Cannon obtained the degrees of MEng in Engineering Science in 1993 and D.Phil. in Control Engineering in 1998, both from Oxford University, and SM in Mechanical Engineering in 1995 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently Associate Professor of Engineering Science, Oxford University, and an Official Fellow of St John's College. His research interests are in robust constrained control and stochastic model predictive control, specifically: issues relating to optimization and controller design, closed loop stability and constraint satisfaction, and applications to power management in electric vehicles.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : On generalized homogeneity and time-constrained stabilization of evolution systems.

Séminaire le 25 Avril 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Andrey polyakov (NON-A team, Inria-Lille-Nord Europe)

Homogeneity is a symmetry of an object (e.g. function or operator) with respect to some transformations (dilations). Nonlinear homogeneous ODEs (ordinary differential equations) form an important class of models of control systems. They appear as local approximations of nonlinear plant and include models of process control, nonholonomic mechanical systems, models with frictions, etc. Being non-linear the homogeneous systems demonstrate properties typical for linear systems, for example, local stability implies the global one, stable homogeneous control system is ISS (input-to-state stable) with respect to measurement noises and additive exogenous disturbance, etc.

This talk is devoted to extension of ideas of homogeneity to evolution systems in Banach/Hilbert spaces. A lot of well-known partial differential equations are homogeneous in a generalized sense, (e.g. heat, wave, Navier-Stocks, Saint-Venant, Korteweg-de Vries, fast diffusion equations). They inherit many important properties of homogeneous ODEs such as  scalability of trajectories or finite-time stability in the case of negative homogeneity degree. Homogeneity allows us to design a universal control for finite-time stabilization of evolution system.

Bio. Andrey Polyakov received PhD degree from Voronezh State University (Russia) in 2005.
He was lecturer (2004-2007) and associate professor (2008-2010) of this university.
In 2007 and 2008 he was a post-doctoral research associate with Automatic Control Department of CINVESTAV (Mexico). From 2010 till 2013 he was researcher with Institute of Control Sciences of Russian Academy of Sciences. Now Andrey Polyakovis Inria researcher with NON-A team of Inria Lille Nord Europe (France). His research interests include
different problems of robust nonlinear control and estimation. He is co-author of the book "Attractive Ellipsoids in Robust Control". He is editor of International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (JOTA), Automation and Remote Control.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Controllability of a bent 3-link magnetic microswimmer

Séminaire le 23 Mars 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle des séminaires du L2S

A recent promising technique for moving a robotic micro-swimmer (in view notably of medical applications) is to apply an external magnetic field. In this talk, I will focus on a 3-link magnetic microswimmer, which consists of three rigid magnetized segments connected by two torsional springs, one of the springs being twisted, so that the swimmer is not aligned at rest. By acting on it with
an external magnetic field, the swimmer twists and moves through the surrounding fluid. After explaining some specific difficulties coming from the Low Reynolds number regime, I will explain how to model the problem thanks to a system of non-linear ODEs. By considering the external magnetic field as a control function, I will state a local partial controllability result around the equilibrium states. Then, I will propose a constructive method to find a magnetic field that allows the swimmer to move along a prescribed trajectory (tracking) in view of obtaining global partial controllability results. Finally, I will show some numerical simulations that illustrate the practical difficulties of the tracking method due to the straight positions of the swimmer. This is a joint work with Laetitia Giraldi (INRIA Sophia), Jean-Baptiste Pomet (INRIA Sophia) and Clément Moreau (ENS Cachan).

Bio: Pierre Lissy received his Ph.D degree in Applied Mathematics in 2013 under the direction of Professor Jean-Michel Coron at Université Pierre et Marie Curie. He is now Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics at University Paris-Dauphine since 2014. His research interests include the controllability properties of partial differential equations (PDEs), with a focus on the controllability of (linear and non-linear) coupled systems of PDEs and the estimations of the cost of the control near the minimal time of control and in singular limits. He began recently to work on the controllability properties of magnetized micro-swimmers governed by non-linear ODEs.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Time-extremal trajectories of generic control-affine systems have at most finite-order Fuller singularities

Séminaire le 23 Mars 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle des séminaires du L2S
Francesco Boarotto (CMAP, Ecole Polytechnique)

Let $M$ be a smooth connected $n$-dimensional manifold, and consider on it the control-affine system $\dot{q}=f_0(q)+uf_1(q),\quad u\in[-1,1].$ Time-extremal trajectories for the time-optimal control problem associated to this system are driven by controls $u$, whose set $\Sigma$ of discontinuities is possibly stratified as follows: $\Sigma_0$ is the set of isolated points in $\Sigma$ (switching times) and, recursively, the $k$-th order Fuller times $\Sigma_k$ are found as the isolated points of $\Sigma\setminus\left(\bigcup_{j=0}^{k-1}\Sigma_j\right)$.

In this talk we show that, in fact, for the generic choice of the pair $(f_0,f_1),$ there exists an integer $N>0$ such that the control $u$ associated to any time-extremal trajectory admits at most Fuller times of order $N$. In particular, $u$ is smooth out of a set of measure zero. This is a joint work with M. Sigalotti (CMAP, Ecole Polytechnique).

Bio: Francesco Boarotto was born in Verona, Italie, in 1988. He received the Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Padou, Italie, in 2012 and the Ph.D degree from SISSA, Trieste, Italie, in 2016. Since then he has been post-doc in CMAP - Ecole Polytechnique. His research interests include geometric control theory and sub-Riemannian geometry.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Computation of Curvature Penalized Shortest Paths via the Fast Marching Algorithm

Séminaire le 28 Février 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Jean-Marie Mirebeau (Laboratoire de mathématique d'Orsay, Université Paris-Sud)

Motivated by applications to motion planning and image segmentation, we consider shortest paths models with a curvature penalization, such as the Euler/Mumford elasticas, or the Reed-Shepp car with or without reverse gear. Our numerical strategy, for computing the path of minimal energy joining two given points, involves approximating these singular models using strongly anisotropic Riemannian or Finslerian metrics on the product space R^d x S^{d-1}. The associated eikonal equations are then solved via specialized variants of the Fast-Marching algorithm.

Bio. Jean-Marie Mirebeau est chargé de recherches au Laboratoire de mathématiques d'Orsay, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay. Ses travaux portent sur la résolution numérique des équations aux dérivées partielles, et en particulier sur les difficultés liées aux fortes anisotropies. C'est à dire à l'existence de directions privilégiées par le modèle, non alignées avec les axes de coordonnées. La conception de schémas pour ces modèles requiert des outils mathématiques peu communs en analyse, souvent issus de l'arithmétique et de la géométrie discrète. Son activité englobe l'étude théorique de la convergence et de la complexité des schémas numériques, leur implémentation et leur distribution en license libre, et le suivi de leur application via des collaborations académiques et industrielles. Jean-Marie Mirebeau a reçu le prix Popov 2016 pour ses contributions en théorie de l'approximation. Il était antérieurement affecté au laboratoire Ceremade de l'Université Paris-Dauphine, et a effectué sa thèse sous la direction d'Albert Cohen à l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du plateau de Saclay : A relaxation result for state constrained delay differential inclusion

Séminaire le 28 Février 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Ihab Haidar (Laboratoire Quartz, ENSEA-CERGY)

This talk is interested by delay differential inclusions in finite dimensional real space. The celebrated Filippov’s theorem is extended to this case. Then, this theorem is generalized to the case when the state variable is constrained to the closure of an open state subset. Under a new “inward pointing condition”, a relaxation result stating that the set of trajectories lying in the interior of the state constraint is dense in the set of constrained trajectories of the convexified inclusion is shown.
Bio. Ihab Haidar was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. He received the Master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Aix-Marseille 1, France, in 2008 and the Ph.D degree from the University of Montpellier 2, France, in 2011. Since then he has been post-doc in different places (Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu, Laboratoire QUARTZ-ENSEA). His research interests include control theory, time delay systems and systems biology.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Cooperative Control of Multi-Agents: On a Sphere Manifold and in the Euclidean Space

Séminaire le 13 Février 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Wei Li (Department of Control and Systems Engineering, Nanjing University)

The talk will discuss cooperative control of multi-agents on a sphere and in the Euclidean space. We will first consider the control law design of agents on a sphere, and analyze the stability, scaling, and geometry properties, and discuss future directions. Then, for agents evolving in the Euclidean space, we will consider coupled agents with second-order dynamics. The state of a single agent includes both position and velocity, thus generally, the agents have both velocity coupling and position couplings (VCPC); and if we consider different VCPC, then interesting yet difficult problems arise. We then discuss two aspects of analysis on consensus convergence , and future directions.

Bio. Wei Li received the Ph.D. degree in Automatic Control from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2008.
From 2009 to 2010, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA. Since 2010, he has been an Associate Professor with the Department of Control and Systems Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. His current research interests include robotics, autonomous mobile robots, decentralized control, cooperative control of mobile robotic agents, and wireless sensor networks. Dr. Li is an Associate Editor of Asian Journal of Control. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Observer synthesis under time-varying sampling for Lipschitz nonlinear systems

Séminaire le 13 Février 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Lucien Etienne (L2S, CentraleSupelec)

The problem of observation of continuous-time nonlinear Lipschitz systems under time-varying discrete measurements is studied. This class of systems naturally occurs when continuous processes are observed through digital sensors and information is sent via a network to a computer for state estimation. Since network introduces uncertainties in the sampling time, the observer must be designed so to take these uncertainties into account. Here two classes of observation scheme are studied. First an impulsive observers, which make instantaneous correction when information is received, is considered. Then a Luenberger-like observer with a piece wise constant correction term is studied. For both classes of observer, generic conditions are provided. Then a restriction of the generic conditions is used to establish tractable conditions that allows the synthesis of an observer gain.
Bio. Lucien Etienne received a M.Sc. Degree in Applied Mathematics at the INSA Rouen in 2012 and a joint Ph.D. in Automatic Control from the university of L'Aquila and the university of Cergy-Pontoise in 2016. After a Post-doc at INRIA Lille on observer synthesis for sampled data system, he is currently Post-doc at L2S CentralSupéléc working on switched systems for embedded control under mixed stochastic/deterministic timing uncertainty.

His research interests include switched and hybrid systems, Observer synthesis and sampled data systems.

### Feedback transformations of underactuated mechanical systems for trajectory planning: case studies in non-prehensile manipulation

Séminaire le 26 Janvier 2017, 14h30 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Amphi F3-09
Anton SHIRIAEV (Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU, Norway)

The talk is aimed at discussion of challenges present in developing model based trajectory planning algorithms for underactuated mechanical systems. Nonlinearity of system’s dynamics and presence of one or several passive degrees of freedom are among several structural properties that are difficult to handle in a trajectory search. Other challenges are related to different formats of representation of feasible trajectories, where some choices can be better suited for further stabilization or advantageous in sensitivity analysis with respect to uncertainty in system parameters. The author is interested to emphasize the attention on two relatively new points in the problem that have recently helped in solving a series of longstanding manipulation problems in robotics: change of coordinates and feedback transformation for mechanical systems are useful to formulate as dependent on an individual trajectory even though such a feasible behavior is not found yet. The arguments are illustrated by new analytical results and the case study in non-prehensile manipulation.

### Feedback transformations of underactuated mechanical systems for trajectory planning: case studies in non-prehensile manipulation

Séminaire le 26 Janvier 2017, 14h30 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Anton SHIRIAEV (Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU, Norway)

The talk is aimed at discussion of challenges present in developing model based trajectory planning algorithms for underactuated mechanical systems. Nonlinearity of system’s dynamics and presence of one or several passive degrees of freedom are among several structural properties that are difficult to handle in a trajectory search. Other challenges are related to different formats of representation of feasible trajectories, where some choices can be better suited for further stabilization or advantageous in sensitivity analysis with respect to uncertainty in system parameters. The author is interested to emphasize the attention on two relatively new points in the problem that have recently helped in solving a series of longstanding manipulation problems in robotics: change of coordinates and feedback transformation for mechanical systems are useful to formulate as dependent on an individual trajectory even though such a feasible behavior is not found yet. The arguments are illustrated by new analytical results and the case study in non-prehensile manipulation.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : What drives the quality of local public goods in Africa? Disentangling social capital and ethnic divisions

Séminaire le 24 Janvier 2017, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Guillaume Hollard (Département d’Economie, Ecole polytechnique)

Two important lines of research shaped our understanding of the ability of communities to engage in collective action. The first line proposes ethnic division as a key determinant, with more ethnically heterogeneous countries having lower economic performances and levels of public goods. Thus, we expect to find better schools where ethnic fractionalization is low. The second line of research focuses on social capital as a major determinant of the ability to engage in collective action.We expect that trust among community members, a widely-used measure of social capital, is an important and positive determinant of school quality. The present work aims to disentangle the relative effects of ethnic fractionalization and social capital on school quality. We use instrumental variable estimations to address reverse causality and other endogeneity issues. We instrument both social capital and ethnic fractionalization by using historical information on the settlement patterns of ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our empirical strategy is implemented by combining four datasets, including Afrobarometer, covering 16 Sub-Saharan countries. We run our analysis at the district level, with more than 1000 districts covered. We find an important and positive effect of trust on the practical aspects of schooling, such as maintaining buildings or providing textbooks. A one percent increase in the level of trust increases the quality of local public goods by 0.18 to 1.05 percent, depending on the measure of school quality under consideration. In sharp contrast, ethnic fractionalization is found to have a very limited effect, if any. We propose a simple model of public good provision that explores a channel by which social capital and ethnic division may (or may not) have an impact on the provision of local public goods such as schools. Our results suggest that policies designed to enhance social capital are likely to have a positive effect on schools and local public goods in general.

Bio. Directeur de recherche au CNRS et professeur associé à l'école polytechnique. Spécialisé dans l'analyse de la décision et du comportement. Responsable du laboratoire d'économie expérimentale.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Moral hazard with mean field type interactions

Séminaire le 24 Janvier 2017, 10h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Thibault Mastrolia (CMAP, Ecole Polytechnique)

We investigate a moral hazard problem in finite time with lump-sum and continuous payments, involving infinitely many Agents, with mean field type interactions, hired by one Principal. By reinterpreting the mean-field game faced by each Agent in terms of a mean field FBSDE, we are able to rewrite the Principal’s problem as a control problem for McKean-Vlasov SDEs. We solve completely and explicitly the problem in special cases, going beyond the usual linear-quadratic framework.

Bio. Après avoir effectué un magistère de mathématiques à l'université de Strasbourg puis le M2 MASEF de l'université Paris-Dauphine, j'ai poursuivi mes études par un doctorat au sein de cette université sous la direction d'Anthony Réveillac et de Dylan Possamaï autour du calcul de Malliavin, des EDSR et de leurs applications en finance. J'ai ensuite été recruté comme Maître de conférences en probabilités et mathématiques financières à l'Ecole Polytechnique. Actuellement, je travaille autour de problèmes de théorie des contrats et de leurs applications.

### Séminaire d’Automatique du plateau de Saclay : Fokker-Planck optimal control for stochastic processes

Séminaire le 13 Décembre 2016, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Mario Annunziato (Università degli Studi di Salerno)

An innovative framework for the control of stochastic process by means of an optimization problem on the Fokker-Planck equation is presented. The time dependent probability density function (PDF)  as representative of the dynamical state of a stochastic system is used, hence the governing Kolmogorov-Fokker-Planck-type (KFP) equation is employed as a constraint for the minimization of a cost function. The problem to find a controller that minimizes the cost function can be solved by solving an optimality system of time dependent forward and backward partial differential equations. A short review of control objectives, KFP equations and numerical techniques to tackle the optimization problem, is shown by using models from biology, physics, and finance.

Bio. Mario Annunziato is a researcher in Mathematics, in the field of Numerical analysis at "Università degli Studi di Salerno" since 2004. He is also a member of "Gruppo Nazionale di Calcolo Scientifico, Instituto Nazionale di Alta Mathemaica". He has received his Ph.D. degree in Physics at " Università degli Studi di Pisa" in 2000. He obtained a degree of laurea in Physics at "Rome University - La Sapienza" in 1995.

His research interests focus on numerical solutions of time dependent Partial Differential Equations (PDE) and Integral Equations, related to stochastic processes and stochastic optimal control.

### Séminaire d'Automatique du Plateau de Saclay : Extending spacecraft operational life: Challenges and opportunities for control

Séminaire le 15 Novembre 2016, 11h00 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Prof. Ilya Kolmanovsky (University of Michigan)

To extend spacecraft operational life, control techniques that can accommodate actuator failures, reduce the use of fuel and avoid collisions with debris are of interest. Such techniques may need to exploit “higher order” physical effects, such as forces and torques normally considered as disturbances, approaches that can take advantage of nonlinearities in spacecraft kinematics and dynamics, and handle stationary and moving obstacle avoidance requirements. Hence spacecraft operational life extension problems create many potential opportunities for the application of nonlinear, optimal and constrained/predictive control.

After general remarks on control challenges and opportunities in spacecraft operational life extension problems, the presentation will focus on related recent case studies.

In particular, it will be shown that for a spacecraft with only two functioning reaction wheels linear controllability of attitude dynamics can be regained, under appropriate assumptions, if solar radiation pressure torques are included in the analysis. This conclusion can be exploited for handling reaction wheel failures based on conventional linear controllers.  Alternative approaches that do not rely on the solar radiation pressure torques but exploit nonlinearities in the spacecraft kinematics and dynamics will also be discussed. Furthermore, an intriguing capability of model predictive controllers to achieve discontinuous stabilization in underactuated spacecraft attitude control problems will be highlighted. We will also touch upon coupled translational and rotational relative motion dynamics of a rigid spacecraft in central gravity field and potential opportunities to move translationally in space by employing attitude control only.  In the final part of the presentation, drift counteraction optimal control problems for systems with drift and/or large disturbances will be introduced, in which the objective is to maximize the time for a system to violate prescribed constraints. Potential applications of drift counteraction optimal control, including for geostationary satellite orbit maintenance and drag induced orbit decay compensation, will be discussed.

### Scalable Techniques for Quantum Network Engineering

Séminaire le 13 Octobre 2016, 10h30 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Dr. Nikolas Tezak (Stanford University)

In the quest for creating "quantum enhanced" systems for information processing currently pursued design strategies are unlikely to scale significantly beyond a few dozen qubits. The dominant design paradigm relies on a vast overhead of external classical control. In this talk we argue for an integrated framework that treats quantum and hybrid quantum-classical systems on equal footing.
We have recently defined a Quantum Hardware Description Language (QHDL) capable of describing networks of such interconnected quantum systems. QHDL is compiled to symbolic system models by a recently developed symbolic software tool suite named QNET. We discuss an example of a recently proposed autonomous Quantum Error Correction circuit with coherently embedded control systems.
Finally, we present a model transformation capable of dividing the description of quantum states into quasi-classical coordinates living on a low-dimensional manifold coupled to a lower complexity quantum state. This approach (QMANIFOLD) is in principle exact and naturally tailored to simulating coupled quantum systems with varying degrees of dissipation.

Bio. Nikolas Tezak is a post-doc in Stanford University's Applied Physics Department, where he works with Hideo Mabuchi. He recently completed his PhD under Professor Mabuchi’s supervision. He also works part-time at Hewlett Packard Laboratories in the Large Scale Integrated Photonics group led by Ray Beausoleil. In November 2016, he will join Rigetti Computing (Berkeley, California) in their quest to build a quantum computer.

### Singular perturbations for hyperbolic port-Hamiltonian and non-hyperbolic systems

Séminaire le 13 Juillet 2016, 10h30 à CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette) Salle du conseil du L2S - B4.40
Prof. Jacquelien Scherpen, University of Groningen

In this talk we explore the methodology of model order reduction based on singular perturbations for a fexible-joint robot within the port-Hamiltonian framework. We show that a fexible-joint robot has a port-Hamiltonian representation which is also a singularly perturbed ordinary differential equation. Moreover, the associated reduced slow subsystem corresponds to a port-Hamiltonian model of a rigid-joint robot. To exploit the usefulness of the reduced models, we provide a numerical example where an existing controller for a rigid robot is implemented. In addition, we provide ideas on how to expand this to planar slow-fast systems at a non-hyperbolic point.  At these type of points, the classical theory of singular perturbations is not applicable and new techniques need to be introduced in order to design a controller that stabilizes such a point. We show for some class of nonlinear systems that using geometric  desingularization (also known as blow up), it is possible to design, in a simple way, controllers that stabilize non-hyperbolic equilibrium points of slow-fast systems. The results are exemplified on the Van der Pol oscillator.