March 27
@
12:00 PM
–
1:00 PM
The Mechanics Seminar Series is a weekly seminar given by campus and visiting speakers on topics across the spectrum of mechanics research (solids, fluids, and dynamics). Professor Xiangru Xu is a professor at UW-Madison.
Title: Safe Control for Learning-Enabled Autonomous Systems
Abstract: This talk presents recent advances in provably safe control for learning-enabled autonomous systems. In the first part, I will discuss reachability analysis and controlled invariance of neural network control systems. I will introduce methods for safety verification and safe control synthesis based on forward and backward reachable set computations using constrained and hybrid zonotopes, together with an interval-based invariance operator for computing the maximum controlled invariant set. In the second part, I will present hierarchical safe control architectures that integrate a high-level optimization-based motion planner with a low-level safety filter, providing formal guarantees of continuous-time safety constraint satisfaction. I will demonstrate their effectiveness through two case studies: safe trajectory planning and tracking for quadrotors, and occlusion-free visual servoing of robotic manipulators.
Bio: Xiangru Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Michigan and the University of Washington. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the Best New Application Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Control Theory and Technology, and Autonomous Intelligent Systems, and is a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board.