Mathematics for Air Traffic Control and Other Hybrid Systems

Presented by Dr. Claire Tomlin

Time and Location:

Wednesday November 3, 2010, 4:30 pm
Franz 1178 (maps and directions)

Reception in the IPAM building immediately following the lecture.

A video recording of this lecture is available here

Abstract:

Updating the Air Traffic Control system with new algorithms, automation, and decision making tools is an important problem, yet the transportation needs in the United States today present challenges that are not answered by the kinds of control systems that have been built in the past. First, aircraft today are equipped with accurate sensors, wireless datalink for communication, and fast onboard computers, giving the Air Traffic Control system a set of sensory and computational resources that are distributed throughout the airspace. Second, there is no mechanism for the air traffic system to support the integration of autonomous pilotless aircraft, known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A burgeoning industry, these aircraft are used in situations in which it is too dull, or too dangerous, for piloted aircraft. Third, there are strong economic drivers to bring in new, efficient methods for embedded software design for transportation systems, which enable safety critical system verification and validation in a cost effective way.

To address these needs in air transportation, new kinds of control algorithms for automated decision making are needed. They will demand new ways of modeling large scale systems. They will require strict guarantees of safety and efficiency. The technological focus of the research in my lab is a new kind of mathematical model, known as a hybrid system, which combines discrete state and continuous state dynamics. We have developed new control algorithms and software, to both design controllers for hybrid systems that can guarantee system safety, and to optimize system performance. In this talk, I will present some of these algorithms, and give examples of how they have been applied to problems in Air Traffic Control.

The Speaker:

Dr. Claire Tomlin holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Imperial College, London, and a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley. She is the author of over 120 technical articles which have appeared in such publications as Science, the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, and Automatica. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006. She is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and holds a joint appointment as associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Dr. Tomlin studies control theory and practice. For a joint project with NASA Ames Research Center, she is working to automate air traffic control and design flight-management systems that integrate collision avoidance. Also working on the design and control of a team of unmanned aerial vehicles, she focuses on formation flying, distributed control and reliable control over communication links. Currently, Dr. Tomlin is a member of IPAM’s Science Advisory Board.

Contact Us:

Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM)
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