- Date: July 1, 2020 - July 3, 2020
Where: Denver, Colorado (virtual)
MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Yebin Wang; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Optimization
Brief - At the American Control Conference, MERL presented 10 papers on subjects including autonomous-vehicle decision making and motion planning, nonlinear estimation for thermal-fluid models and GNSS positioning, learning-based reference governors and reference governors for railway vehicles, and fail-safe rendezvous control.
-
- Date: July 7, 2021 - July 14, 2021
Where: Bratislava, Slovakia
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Optimization
Brief - MERL researcher Stefano Di Cairano has been appointed as Vice-Chair for Industry of the International Program Committee of the 7th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control, which will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia, in July 2021.
IFAC NMPC is the main symposium focused on model predictive control, theory, methods and applications, includes contributions on control, optimization, and machine learning research, and is held every 3 years.
-
- Date: December 8, 2020 - December 11, 2020
Where: IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
Research Areas: Control, Optimization
Brief - Ankush Chakrabarty, a Research Scientist in MERL's Multi-Physical Systems, will be serving as an Associate Editor at the 2020 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC).
-
- Date: February 10, 2020
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Dr. Benosman has been nominated as an associate editor at the IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS).
The L-CSS publishes peer-reviewed brief articles that provide a rapid and concise account of innovative ideas regarding the theory, design, and applications of all aspects of control engineering.
-
- Date: December 12, 2019
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Robotics
Brief - Stefano Di Cairano has been appointed inaugural chair of the IEEE CSS Technology Conference Editorial Board. In this role Stefano will coordinate the creation and maintenance of the Editorial Board, and will coordinate the editorial board activities supporting the IEEE CCTA conference series, including manuscript assignment to associate editors, monitoring of the manuscript assessment, and program finalization with the conference program chairs. Stefano will also work with the other IEEE CSS Editorial Board Chairs and IEEE CSS Leadership to ensure the quality and improve the processes of IEEE CSS publications.
-
- Date: December 11, 2019 - December 13, 2019
Where: Nice, France
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Optimization
Brief - At the Conference on Decision and Control, MERL presented 8 papers on subjects including estimation for thermal-fluid models and transportation networks, analysis of HVAC systems, extremum seeking for multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning for vehicle platoons, and learning with applications to autonomous vehicles.
-
- Date: October 10, 2019
Awarded to: Devesh Jha, Nurali Virani, Zhenyuan Yuan, Ishana Shekhawat and Asok Ray
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Robotics
Brief - MERL researcher Devesh Jha has won the Rudolf Kalman Best Paper Award 2019 for the paper entitled "Imitation of Demonstrations Using Bayesian Filtering With Nonparametric Data-Driven Models". This paper, published in a Special Commemorative Issue for Rudolf E. Kalman in the ASME JDSMC in March 2018, uses Bayesian filtering for imitation learning in Hidden Mode Hybrid Systems. This award is given annually by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of ASME to the authors of the best paper published in the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control during the preceding year.
-
- Date: September 25, 2019
Where: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY
MERL Contact: Scott A. Bortoff
Research Areas: Control, Multi-Physical Modeling
Brief - The seminar, entitled “HVAC System Control and Optimization,” was part of the Mercer Distinguished Lecture Series in the Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY. Given on Wednesday September 25, 2019, it focused on the systems engineering and control issues associated with highly integrated Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems for low and zero energy buildings.
-
- Date: August 19, 2019 - August 23, 2019
Where: AI for Engineering Summer School 2019
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning
Brief - Ankush Chakrabarty, a Visiting Research Scientist in MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group, gave an invited talk at the AI for Engineering Summer School 2019 hosted by Autodesk. The talk briefly described MERL's research areas, and focused on Dr. Chakrabarty's work at MERL (with collaborators from the CD and DA group) on the use of supervised learning for verification of control systems with simulators/neural nets in the loop, and on constraint-enforcing reinforcement learning. Other speakers at the event included researchers from various academic and industrial research facilities including U Toronto, UW-Seattle, Carnegie Mellon U, the Vector Institute, and the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms.
-
- Date: July 10, 2019 - July 12, 2019
Where: Philadelphia
MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Yebin Wang; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Optimization
Brief - At the American Control Conference, MERL presented 8 papers on subjects including model predictive control applications, estimation and motion planning for vehicles, modular control architectures, and adaptation and learning.
-
- Date: June 25, 2019 - June 28, 2019
Where: Naples, Italy
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano; Christopher R. Laughman; Daniel N. Nikovski; Diego Romeres; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Optimization
Brief - The European Control Conference is the premier control conference in Europe. This year MERL was well represented with papers on control for HVAC, machine learning for estimation and control, robot assembly, and optimization methods for control.
-
- Date: June 10, 2019 - June 14, 2019
Where: Paris
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization
Brief - MERL researcher Stefano Di Cairano and Prof. Ilya Kolmanovsky, Dept. Aerospace Engineering, the University of Michigan, were invited to teach a class on "Predictive and Optimization Based Control for Automotive and Aerospace Application" at the 2019 International Graduate School in Control, of the European Embedded Control Institute (EECI). Every year EECI invites world renown experts to teach 21-hours class modules, mostly for PhD students but also for professionals, on selected control subjects. Stefano and Ilya's class was attended by 30 "students" from both academia and industry, from all around the world, interested in automotive and aerospace control. The module described the fundamentals of modeling and control design in automotive and aerospace through lectures, real world examples and exercises, and placed particular emphasis on techniques such as MPC, reference governors, and optimal control.
-
- Date & Time: July 29, 2019; 10 AM
Where: US National Congress on Computational Mechanics 2019, in Austin Texas
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - MERL researcher Mouhacine Benosman will present his work on 'Learning-based Robust Stabilization for Reduced-Order Models of 3D Boussinesq Equations' as a keynote speaker at the mini-symposium 'Data assimilation in Model Order Techniques for Computational Mechanics', during the next US National Congress on Computational Mechanics 2019, in Austin Texas.
-
- Date: April 15, 2019
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Area: Control
Brief - Stefano Di Cairano, senior team leader and distinguished research scientist in the Control and Dynamical Systems group, was interviewed in the April 2019 issue of IEEE Control Systems Magazine. Stefano described himself, promising opportunities in the control field, and how his passion for control research fits well into the industrial research laboratory setting at MERL. It is very good reading for any young researcher considering possible career trajectories.
-
- Date: April 28, 2019
Where: 3rd IAVSD Workshop on Dynamics of Road Vehicles: Connected and Automated Vehicles
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Areas: Control, Optimization, Robotics
Brief - Stefano Di Cairano, Distinguished Scientist and Senior Team Leader in the Control and Dynamical Systems Group, will give an invited talk entitled: "Modularity, integration and synergy in architectures for autonomous driving" that covers recent work in the lab concerning building a modular, robust control framework for autonomous driving.
-
- Date: February 12, 2019
Where: Michigan State University
MERL Contacts: Scott A. Bortoff; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham Goldsmith
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Uros Kalabic, of MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group, gave a talk at the Michigan State University Mechanical Engineering Seminar. The talk, entitled "Reference governors: Industrial applications and theoretical advances," covered some of the exciting research being done at MERL on reference governors and briefly described MERL's other research areas. The abstract of the talk can be found via the link below.
-
- Date & Time: Thursday, February 14, 2019; 1:30 -3:00 PM
Speaker: Avishai Weiss, MERL
MERL Hosts: Stefano Di Cairano; Avishai Weiss
Research Area: Control
Abstract - Avishai Weiss from MERL's Control and Dynamical Systems group will give a talk at Stanford's Aeronautics and Astronautics department titled: "Low-Thrust GEO Satellite Station Keeping, Attitude Control, and Momentum Management via Model Predictive Control". Electric propulsion for satellites is much more fuel efficient than conventional methods. The talk will describe MERL's solution to the satellite control problems deriving from the low thrust provided by electric propulsion.
-
- Date: February 4, 2019
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman is a guest editor of a special issue on Learning-based Adaptive Control: Theory and Application, recently published by the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. Other guest editors included Professor F.L. Lewis (University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute), Professor M. Guay (Queen's University), and Professor D. Owens (The University of Sheffield).
The special issue presents results of current research on learning-based adaptive methods, merging together model-based and data-driven machine learning approaches.
More information on the content of this special issue can be found at:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991115/2019/33/2.
-
- Date: January 11, 2019
Where: PHYSICAL REVIEW FLUIDS, 4, 013801 – Published 11 January 2019
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - The journal Physical Review Fluids has recently instituted "...a service to our readers, we are formally marking a small number of papers published in Physical Review Fluids that the editors and referees find of particular interest, importance, or clarity." The following paper with MERL authors Saleh Nabi and Piyush Grover was so honored in the January 2019 issue: "Reduced-order modeling of fully turbulent buoyancy-driven flows using the Green's function method.".
-
- Date: February 1, 2019
Where: WPI
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Mouhacine Benosman has been invited to give a talk at the Aerospace Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on Lyapunov-based model reduction and stabilization of PDEs, with application to the Boussinesq equation. Further details of the talk can be found in the below link.
-
- Date: August 19, 2018 - August 22, 2018
Where: IFAC NMPC, Madison, WI
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Area: Control
Brief - The 6th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC), http://www.nmpc2018.org/, is a highly focused conference that attracts experts in this area from around the world. Members of the Control and Dynamical Systems group presented 8 papers (out of the 149 at the conference!) Stefano Di Cairano delivered one of the 7 plenary lectures entitled "Contract-Based Design of Control Architectures by Model Predictive Control.".
-
- Date: November 1, 2018
Research Areas: Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems
Brief - Wiley has recently launched the Journal of Advanced Control for Applications: Engineering and Industrial Systems, which seeks original and high-quality contributions on the design of advanced control for applications. The aim is to stimulate the adoption of new and improved control design methods and provide a forum for the discussion of control application problems. Papers for the journal must include sufficient novelty in either the control design methods, the modelling and simulation techniques used, or the applications studied. MERL researcher, Mouhacine Benosman, has been invited to join the Editorial Board of this new journal.
-
- Date & Time: Thursday, November 29, 2018; 4-6pm
Location: 201 Broadway, 8th floor, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contacts: Elizabeth Phillips; Anthony Vetro
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Electric Systems, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
Brief - Snacks, demos, science: On Thursday 11/29, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) will host an open house for graduate+ students interested in internships, post-docs, and research scientist positions. The event will be held from 4-6pm and will feature demos & short presentations in our main areas of research including artificial intelligence, robotics, computer vision, speech processing, optimization, machine learning, data analytics, signal processing, communications, sensing, control and dynamical systems, as well as multi-physyical modeling and electronic devices. MERL is a high impact publication-oriented research lab with very extensive internship and university collaboration programs. Most internships lead to publication; many of our interns and staff have gone on to notable careers at MERL and in academia. Come mix with our researchers, see our state of the art technologies, and learn about our research opportunities. Dress code: casual, with resumes.
Pre-registration for the event is strongly encouraged:
merlopenhouse.eventbrite.com
Current internship and employment openings:
www.merl.com/internship/openings
www.merl.com/employment/employment
Information about working at MERL:
www.merl.com/employment.
-
- Date & Time: Monday, October 8, 2018 - , October 11, 2018; 8am-5pm
Location: MIT Samberg Conference Center, Cambridge, MA
MERL Contact: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Areas: Control, Multi-Physical Modeling
Brief - The 2018 American Modelica Conference, the first North American conference focused on the Modelica multiphysics modeling language, will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 9-10, 2018 at the Samberg Conference Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Chris Laughman, a team leader in the Multiphysical Systems and Devices group, is the local chair for the conference.
This conference will feature over 40 papers and user presentations on the Modelica language and its application to a wide variety of problem domains, including thermofluid, aerospace, automotive, and energy systems. There will also be 2 keynote addresses by John McKibben (Proctor & Gamble) and Hilding Elmqvist (Mogram AB). Nearly 100 attendees from 11 different countries have already registered for the conference, and it promises to be a very educational experience.
MERL is also hosting two free workshops on October 8 to provide opportunities to engineers looking to increase their familiarity with the language and its applications. An introductory workshop will be led by engineers from Modelon during that morning, and then a second workshop on the application of Modelica to building systems will be led by Michael Wetter from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in the afternoon. MERL will also host a Modelica user meeting on October 11 that will provide more details and discussion about trends in the use and development of Modelica in the larger engineering community.
-
- Date: August 21, 2018 - July 24, 2018
Where: CCTA2018 Copenhagen
MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
Research Area: Control
Brief - MERL researchers Karl Berntorp and Stefano Di Cairano organized an industry session on Autonomous Vehicles at the 2018 Conference on Control Technologies and Applications, Aug. 21-24. (http://ccta2018.ieeecss.org/) They will present the main tutorial paper in the session. Such industry sessions are organized by researchers that are well established in terms of both academic relevance and real-world impact of their research.
-