The challenge
Many aspects of our everyday life are influenced by automation and control. These are fundamental to any system or device – mechanical or electronic – sensing changes in conditions to automatically adjust in real-time.
From air conditioners and traffic lights to smart cities and car cruise control, a well-designed control system should be robust, reliable, efficient and choose corrective actions based on available data.
Today's society is facing a broad range of unprecedented challenges when it comes to climate change, ageing populations and the need to protect ourselves from cybersecurity issues in a digital world.
As our world continues to modernise, control system design will have transformative, real-world impacts in enabling technology to address many of these challenges.
Associated schools, institutes & centres
The solution
We deliver world-class research in the areas of control theory, quantum control engineering, applied mathematics, quantum optics, machine learning and control systems engineering. Our research strengths include:
- estimation and control theory to improve the precision and reliability of quantum optical systems
- robust control of flexible structures and atomic force microscopy
- optimisation and distributed control of power and renewable energy systems
- distributed estimation in large scale networks.
The impact
We undertake fundamental research into the theory of automatic systems and control. Our team develops fundamental theories as well as novel principles and methodologies to create new opportunities in a range of control systems engineering areas.
The Systems & Control group at UNSW Canberra is known internationally for its contributions to the quantum, robust, and stochastic control and filtering theories. Recognised as world-class, these theories have applications across power engineering, unmanned vehicles, atomic force microscopy, and quantum optics.
Research projects
- Optimisation methods for coherent quantum signal processing estimation and filtering.
- Efficient and High-precision System Identification in Quantum Cybernetics.
- Efficient Parameter Identification and Robust Control of Quantum Systems.
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- Asavanant W, Shiozawa Y, Yokoyama S, Charoensombutamon B, Emura H, Alexander R N, Takeda S, Yoshikawa J, Menicucci N C, Yonezawa H, Furusawa A, Generation of time-domain-multiplexed two-dimensional cluster state, Science 366, 373-376 (2019)
- Deghat M, Ugrinovskii V, Shames I, Langbort C, Detection and Mitigation of Biasing Attacks on Distributed Estimation Networks. Automatica, 99:369-381, 2019
- Ugrinovskii V, Cooperative resilient estimation of uncertain systems subjected to a biasing interference. In T. Basar (Ed), Uncertainty in Complex Networked Systems, Birkhäuser Series “Systems and Control: Foundations and Applications”, 93-120, 2018
- Li J, Dong D, Wei Z, Liu Y, Pan Y, Nori F and Zhang X. Quantum reinforcement learning during human decision-making. Nature Human Behaviour, vol.4, pp. 294-307, 2020
- Guo Y, Shu C C, Dong D, and Nori F. Vanishing and revival of resonance Raman scattering. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 123, p. 223202, 2019
- Wu L, Pota H R, and Petersen I R. Synchronization Conditions for a Multirate Kuramoto Network with an Arbitrary Topology and Nonidentical Oscillators. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 49(6), 2242-2254, 2019
- Rana M S, Pota, H R, and Petersen I R. Improvement in the imaging performance of atomic force microscopy: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 14(2), 1265-1285, 2017
- Habibullah H, Pota H R and Petersen I R. A robust control approach for high-speed nanopositioning applications. Sensors and Actuators, A: Physical, 292, 137-148, 2019
- Wu Z, Mo H, Xiong J, Xie M. Adaptive event-triggered observer-based output feedback load frequency control for networked power systems. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vol. 16 (6), p. 3952-3962, 2019
- Asavanant W, Shiozawa Y, Yokoyama S, Charoensombutamon B, Emura H, Alexander R N, Takeda S, Yoshikawa J, Menicucci N C, Yonezawa H, Furusawa A, Generation of time-domain-multiplexed two-dimensional cluster state, Science 366, 373-376 (2019)
Culture
The Systems & Control group at UNSW Canberra is known internationally for its contributions to the quantum, robust, and stochastic control and filtering theories. Recognised as world-class these theories have applications across power engineering, atomic force microscopy, and quantum optics.
The group hosts a node of the UNSW-led ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology (CQC2T). Our research is supported by funding from the Australian Research Council and US Office for Naval Research. The group mentors a number of junior researchers and PhD students and regularly hosts international visitors.
We host a regular seminar program that attracts high profile national and international speakers who are world leaders in systems and control. We also jointly organise activities with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) ACT - Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Chapter and IEEE ACT/NSW - Control Systems Society Chapter.
We are active in governance, publication, and conference activities within the IEEE, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). Professor Valeri Ougrinovski is Senior Editor of the IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS) and is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board, Automatica (IFAC) and SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization. He is a member of the Organising Committee for the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2020. Associate Professor Daoyi Dong is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS).
