Interconnections and Control of Hybrid Systems

Groups of autonomous vehicles performing surveillance, fireflies synchronizing their flashes, networks of genes regulating their expressions, distributed loads and energy sources interacting in the power grid are a few examples of complex interconnections featuring continuous and discrete/impulsive dynamics. We present tools for the analysis and control of such interconnections. The individual systems are modeled as hybrid dynamical systems with inputs and outputs. Interconnections of input-to-output and input-output-to-state stable hybrid systems are considered. Sufficient conditions for these properties in terms of Lyapunov functions, including a small gain theorem, are presented. Control Lyapunov functions are introduced and results on stabilizability by continuous feedback are presented for this class of systems.

Ricardo G. Sanfelice received the B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2001. He joined the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002, where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 2004 and 2007, respectively. During 2007 and 2008, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2009, he joined the faculty of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona, where he is currently assistant professor. Professor Sanfelice received the 2010 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award. He was an Air Force Summer Faculty Fellow in 2010 and 2011. His research interests are in modeling, stability, robust control, observer design, and simulation of nonlinear and hybrid systems with applications intersecting the areas of robotics, aerospace, and biology.