Hierarchical Control

Research Projects

• Theory of hierarchical, distributed systems

The control of large systems is always organized in a distributed hierarchy. The aim of this ONR-funded project is to develop a theoretical framework for describing such control architectures, and tools, techniques and applications to determine the utility of the framework. The theoretical work will explore two innovations: a `multi-world' semantics in contrast to the `one-world' semantics used in control theory and AI today, and a semantics of `group of agents' that is distinct from the `collection of agents'. In order to test the utility of the framework we propose to develop tools for describing such architectures based on the hybrid simulation language SHIFT, a simulation testbed of distributed agents for the study of different control organizations, and collaboration with other ONR researchers to focus the tools on the control of unmanned vehicles.

Recent publications

• Simulation-based optimization of Markov decision processes: An empirical process theory approach. R. Jain and P. Varaiya. Automatica 46 (2010) 1297-1304.
• Hierarchical control of semi-autonomous teams under uncertainty. Mica Final Report v.5.
  P. Varaiya et al. May 2004. [pdf 1.63M]
• Extensions of PAC learning for partially observable Markov decision processes.
  R. Jain and P. Varaiya. Proc. Conf. on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), March 2004. [pdf 111K]
• Control under communication constraints.
  R. Jain, T. Simsek and P. Varaiya. Proc. 41st IEEE CDC, Las Vegas, Dec. 2002. [pdf 450K]
• Communication and control of distributed hybrid systems.
  T. Simsek, J. Sousa and P. Varaiya. Proc. ACC, Washington, DC, 2001. [pdf 260 K]
• A question about hierarchical systems.
  P. Varaiya. In T. Djaferis and I. Schick (eds), System Theory: modeling, analysis and control, Kluwer, 2000. [pdf 54K]
• A theory of hierarchical, distributed systems.
  P. Varaiya and T. Simsek. Slides of talk presented at ONR review, Los Angeles, CA. July 1998.
• Towards a layered view of control.
  P. Varaiya. Slides of talk presented at 35th Alleron Conference, Urbana, IL. October 1997. [postscript 437K].
  The text can be found at Text.[pdf 61K].