Optimal Control on Lie Groups

Cooperative Control Strategies for Load Carrying Drones

We consider a novel problem in cooperative control of quadrotors - a group of quadrotors carrying a ball and plate system slung via inextensible tethers.

The ball and plate system, being underactuated itself, adds an additional layer of complexity to the control design problem. The aim of this research is to synthesize controls for the quadrotors to stabilize the underactuated payload.

This work was done under the guidance of Prof. Ravi N. Banavar for my Bachelor’s thesis which won the Undergraduate Research Award - 02. More details can be found in our paper from ACC 2019.

Discrete Optimal Control for Interconnected Mechanical Systems

In this work, we develop variational integrators for a class of underactuated mechanical systems using the theory of discrete mechanics. Further, a discrete optimal control problem is formulated for the considered class of systems and subsequently solved to obtain necessary conditions that characterise optimal trajectories.

This work was done under the guidance of Prof. Ravi N. Banavar for my Master’s thesis. More details can be found in our paper from NOLCOS 2019.