Control and Estimation of Nonlinear Systems

Many phenomena arising in real-world applications are inherently nonlinear. In our research, we develop tools and methods that can be used for the analysis, estimation and control of such nonlinear systems. In this context, their robustness properties against model inaccuracies and measurement noise play a fundamental role to ensure their practical applicability. Examples of our past and current research in this area include the following topics:

• Systems theoretic properties of nonlinear systems with inputs and outputs, such as input-to-state stability, controllability, and dissipativity as well as their connection to optimal control.
• Detectability properties of nonlinear systems and their verification.
• State estimation for nonlinear systems with a focus on opimization-based methods. Here, the current system state is determined by solving an optimization problem using measured input and output sequences in a moving time window.
• The study of observability/detectability and state estimation of systems with irregularly sampled output measurements.