2013-14 Catalog: Control & Dynamical Systems

Research in control and dynamical systems, supervised by a Caltech faculty member. The topic selection is determined by the adviser and the student and is subject to approval by the CDS faculty. First and second terms: midterm progress report and oral presentation during finals week. Third term: completion of thesis and final presentation. Not offered on a pass/fail basis.

An introduction to feedback and control in physical, biological, engineering, and information sciences. Basic principles of feedback and its use as a tool for altering the dynamics of systems and managing uncertainty. Key themes throughout the course will include input/output response, modeling and model reduction, linear vs. nonlinear models, and local vs. global behavior. This course is taught concurrently with CDS 110 a, but is intended for students who are interested primarily in the concepts and tools of control theory and not the analytical techniques for design and synthesis of control systems.

An introduction to analysis and design of feedback control systems, including classical control theory in the time and frequency domain. Modeling of physical, biological, and information systems using linear and nonlinear differential equations. Stability and performance of interconnected systems, including use of block diagrams, Bode plots, the Nyquist criterion, and Lyapunov functions. Robustness and uncertainty management in feedback systems through stochastic and deterministic methods. Introductory random processes, Kalman filtering, and norms of signals and systems. The first term of this course is taught concurrently with CDS 101, but includes additional lectures, reading, and homework that is focused on analytical techniques for design and synthesis of control systems.

Basics topics in dynamics in Euclidean space, including equilibria, stability, Lyapunov functions, periodic solutions, Poincaré-Bendixon theory, Poincaré maps. Attractors and structural stability. Introduction to simple bifurcations and eigenvalue crossing conditions. Discussion of bifurcations in applications, invariant manifolds, the method of averaging and singular perturbation theory. Additional topics may include Hamiltonian and Lagrangian systems.

This course focuses on a probabilistic treatment of uncertainty in modeling a dynamical system's input-output behavior, including propagating uncertainty in the input through to the output. It covers the foundations of probability as a multi-valued logic for plausible reasoning with incomplete information that extends Boolean logic, giving a rigorous meaning for the probability of a model for a system. Approximate analytical methods and efficient stochastic simulation methods for robust system analysis and Bayesian system identification are covered. Topics include: Bayesian updating of system models based on system time-history data, including Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques; Bayesian model class selection with a recent information-theoretic interpretation that shows why it automatically gives a quantitative Ockham's razor; stochastic simulation methods for the output of stochastic dynamical systems subject to stochastic inputs, including Subset Simulation for calculating small "failure" probabilities; and Bayes filters for sequential estimation of system states and model parameters, that generalize the Kalman filter to nonlinear dynamical systems.

Research project in control and dynamical systems, supervised by a CDS faculty member.

Linear spaces, subspaces, spans of sets, linear independence, bases, dimensions; linear transformations and operators, examples, nullspace/kernel, range-space/image, one-to-one and onto, isomorphism and invertibility, rank-nullity theorem; products of linear transformations, left and right inverses, generalized inverses. Adjoints of linear transformations, singular-value decomposition and Moore-Penrose inverse; matrix representation of linear transformations between finite-dimensional linear spaces, determinants, multilinear forms; metric spaces: examples, limits and convergence of sequences, completeness, continuity, fixed-point (contraction) theorem, open and closed sets, closure; normed and Banach spaces, inner product and Hilbert spaces: examples, Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, orthogonal sets, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, projections onto subspaces, best approximations in subspaces by projection; bounded linear transformations, principle of superposition for infinite series, well-posed linear problems, norms of operators and matrices, convergence of sequences and series of operators; eigenvalues and eigenvectors of linear operators, including their properties for self-adjoint operators, spectral theorem for self-adjoint and normal operators; canonical representations of linear operators (finite-dimensional case), including diagonal and Jordan form, direct sums of (generalized) eigenspaces. Schur form; functions of linear operators, including exponential, using diagonal and Jordan forms, Cayley-Hamilton theorem. Taught concurrently with ACM 104.

Introduction to modern control systems with emphasis on the role of control in overall system analysis and design. Examples drawn from throughout engineering and science. Open versus closed loop control. State-space methods, time and frequency domain, stability and stabilization, realization theory. Time-varying and nonlinear models. Uncertainty and robustness.

Topics dependent on class interests and instructor. May be repeated for credit.

Research in the field of control and dynamical systems. By arrangement with members of the staff, properly qualified graduate students are directed in research.