Iterative learning control (ILC) is a 2-degree-of-freedom technique that seeks to improve system performance along the time and iteration domains. Traditionally, ILC has been implemented to minimize trajectory-tracking errors across an entire cycle period. However, there are applications in which the necessity for improved tracking performance can be limited to a few specific locations. For suc...

Decentralized control is a longstanding challenge in systems theory. A decentralized controller may consist of multiple local controllers, connected to disjoint or overlapping sets of sensors and actuators, and where each local controller has limited ability to communicate directly with the remaining local controllers and, in addition, may lack global knowledge of the plant and operation of the...

The Multiband Imager (MI) is one of the 14 instruments for the Japanese SELENE (KAGUYA) mission. Goal of the SELENE (KAGUYA) mission is to understand origin and evolution of the Moon by obtaining global element and mineral compositions, topological structure, gravity field of the whole Moon, and electromagnetic and particle environment of the Moon. MI is designed to be a high-resolution multiba...

How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks. But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries led to poor performance? We report a study in which participants manually dialed a UK-style telephone number while driving a simulated vehicle. If the driver were to exclusively return his or he...

This thesis presents novel analysis and synthesis concepts for linear control systems with parametric uncertainties. Different performance objectives such as l1, H∞, H2, and quadratic performance are considered. In the analysis section, upper bounds on the l∞-gain (or the l1-norm) of uncertain systems are developed. These bounds exhibit different degrees of computational effort and accuracy. In...

Software for the resolution of certain kind of problems, those that rate high in the Stringent Performance Objectives adjustment factor (IFPUG scheme), can be described using a combination of game theory and autonomous systems. From this description it can be shown that some of those problems exhibit chaotic behavior, an important fact in understanding the functioning of the related software. A...

In a sample of California hospitals, we find that the composition of the board of directors varies systematically across ownership types. For all ownership types, except government-owned, we find that poor financial performance is related to board and CEO turnover. However, different ownership types place different weights on levels of charity care and administrative expenses. Our overall findi...

Configurable software systems can be tuned for better performance. Leveraging on some Pareto optimizers, recent work has shifted from tuning a single, time-related performance objective to two intrinsically different objectives that assess distinct aspects of the system, each with varying aspirations satisfied, e.g., “ latency is less than 10s ” while memory usage no more 1GB ”. Before we desig...