One Horror Story and Three Recent Triumphs of a Recovering Controlophobe

A "controlophobe" is someone who has a fear of control theory, and wants to stay as far away from it as possible. I consider myself to be one (albeit on the path to recovery, thanks to Mechatronics!). This presentation touch on how I became a controlophobe. It will then highlight three case studies (triumphs) at the Mechatronics and Sustainability Research Lab where control theory has been used to address challenges related to developing more sustainable advanced manufacturing machines. The first case study will demonstrate an elegant control theoretic framework for optimally locating passive vibration isolators to minimize unwanted vibration which plague ultra-precision manufacturing machines. The second case study will present an optimal transfer function relationship and how it has been used to realize the best positioning performance at very high energy efficiencies using a redundantly-actuated hybrid feed drive. The last case study will explain the concept of filtered basis functions and how it has been applied to tracking control of non-minimum phase and highly oscillatory systems that are common in manufacturing.
Chinedum Okwudire joined the mechanical engineering faculty at the University of Michigan in 2011. Prior to joining Michigan, he was the mechatronic systems optimization team leader at DTL (Mori Seiki, Ltd.) based in Davis, CA. Chinedum received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2009. During the course of his Ph.D., he worked closely with the mechatronics team of Siemens Automation in Germany on the performance improvement of linear motor-driven machines. He holds an M.A.Sc. degree (2005) and a B.Sc. degree (2003) in Mechanical Engineering from UBC and Middle East Technical University, respectively. He has received a number of awards including the Graduate Teaching Award and Walter C. Koerner Fellowship at UBC, and the German Academic Exchange Fellowship. He is a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER award.