SENSING AND CONTROL UNDER RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS AND UNCERTAINTY: RISK NEUTRAL AND RISK SENSITIVE APPROACHES

Abstract

In network estimation and control systems like sensor networks or industrial robotic systems,there are often restrictions or uncertainties that must be taken into account. For example, there are often bandwidth and communication constraints on the estimators or controllers. Additionally, the dynamics model is not always known. Lastly, noise or exogenous disturbances can adversely affect your system.

This thesis addresses three problems in sensing and control in both the H2 and risk-sensitivecontrol setting. The first problem stems from restrictions on the communications and battery life of sensors. Because of these restrictions, when estimating a state in a system we must cleverly schedule which sensors can be active. The second problem also stems from communication restrictions. In this setting, the sensors and actuators can only communicate with a small number of neighboring sensors. Therefore, we must solve a distributed control problem. The third problem stems from the dynamics of a system being unknown. In this regard, we must solve a control problem using simulated data instead of a fixed model. The research in this thesis, utilizes tools from optimization, estimation, control, and dynamic programming.