The mission of the Decision and Control Laboratory is to create intelligence and autonomy in systems. In the early years, research focused on complex, dynamic systems such as airplanes and rockets. A main theme was robust control of the systems based on limited information.
In many of today’s applications there is an abundance of information, due to advances in sensor and network technologies. The challenge these days is to make the best use of information to create intelligent systems that can perform effectively under diverse circumstances, and can adapt to maintain reliability even in a highly uncertain, complex, and dynamic environment.
We seek tools to obtain control solutions for complex, dynamic behaviors, even for grossly complex systems such as the Internet and other cyberphysical systems, genetic networks, swarms of robots, or economic markets. The creation of these tools requires application of both new and old mathematics.