ACAE Seminar

Title: Biological Pattern Generator and Its Control Application
Speaker: Dr. Zhiyong Chen
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia, USA
Date: May 11, 2006 Thursday
Time: 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Venue: Room 215, William M. W. Mong Engineering Building, CUHK

Abstract
The tremendous technological development has led to today's human-made machines with extreme speed and accuracy but lacking important functionalities such as robustness, adaptability, and autonomy. Various functionalities of living entities have motivated researchers to investigate biologically inspired machines and devices to realize such sophistication. In particular, most animal locomotion such as walking, swimming, crawling, and flying is realized by effective coupling of biological oscillation and mechanical бзrectifiers.би And generation of autonomous oscillations in a specific pattern also plays a crucial role in many important control applications. For instance, oscillations of link angles of a multilink robotic snake can be rectified to generate steady forward velocity of the body if the phases are properly coordinated. In this talk, we will discuss the fundamental control principles embedded in the neuronal feedback circuits for animal locomotion, and bring a new feedback control architecture with biological oscillators in engineering systems.
Rhythmic body motions in animal locomotion are known to be achieved by certain neuronal elements called central pattern generators (CPGs) with sensory feedback. This biological control mechanism has motivated engineers to use the CPG circuits as the basic architectures of nonlinear control laws that achieve coordinated oscillations of engineering systems. To realize such locomotion control systems, we encounter some fundamental control and optimization problems. In this talk, we will focus on the CPG synthesis problem and the achievement and regulation of locomotion. In particular, novel methods for synthesizing artificial CPG circuits have been developed recently to generate oscillation patterns with a prescribed set of frequency, amplitudes, and phases. And the CPGs are further used to achieve and regulate the locomotion of a class of nonlinear rectifier systems. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by an application to the gait control of a snake-like system. In this talk, we will also mention some new results and techniques in robust stabilization and output regulation problems of nonlinear systems.

Biography
Dr. Zhiyong Chen received his B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2000 and his Master of Philosophy and PhD degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He is currently working as a Research Associate with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of Virginia. His research interests include neuronal dynamics, biological control, and nonlinear systems. He has published more than 30 technical articles including over 10 archival journal papers

***** ALL ARE WELCOME *****

Enquiries: Ms. Winnie Wong or Prof. Charlie Wang Chang-ling, Department of Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering, CUHK at 2609 8337. *ACAE Series (2005-06) is contained in the World-Wide Web home page at http://www.acae.cuhk.edu.hk/en/seminars/seminars_ieee.htm.

Title:	Biological Pattern Generator and Its Control Application
Speaker:	Dr. Zhiyong Chen Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Virginia, USA
Date:	May 11, 2006 Thursday
Time:	2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Venue:	Room 215, William M. W. Mong Engineering Building, CUHK
Abstract The tremendous technological development has led to today's human-made machines with extreme speed and accuracy but lacking important functionalities such as robustness, adaptability, and autonomy. Various functionalities of living entities have motivated researchers to investigate biologically inspired machines and devices to realize such sophistication. In particular, most animal locomotion such as walking, swimming, crawling, and flying is realized by effective coupling of biological oscillation and mechanical бзrectifiers.би And generation of autonomous oscillations in a specific pattern also plays a crucial role in many important control applications. For instance, oscillations of link angles of a multilink robotic snake can be rectified to generate steady forward velocity of the body if the phases are properly coordinated. In this talk, we will discuss the fundamental control principles embedded in the neuronal feedback circuits for animal locomotion, and bring a new feedback control architecture with biological oscillators in engineering systems. Rhythmic body motions in animal locomotion are known to be achieved by certain neuronal elements called central pattern generators (CPGs) with sensory feedback. This biological control mechanism has motivated engineers to use the CPG circuits as the basic architectures of nonlinear control laws that achieve coordinated oscillations of engineering systems. To realize such locomotion control systems, we encounter some fundamental control and optimization problems. In this talk, we will focus on the CPG synthesis problem and the achievement and regulation of locomotion. In particular, novel methods for synthesizing artificial CPG circuits have been developed recently to generate oscillation patterns with a prescribed set of frequency, amplitudes, and phases. And the CPGs are further used to achieve and regulate the locomotion of a class of nonlinear rectifier systems. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by an application to the gait control of a snake-like system. In this talk, we will also mention some new results and techniques in robust stabilization and output regulation problems of nonlinear systems.
Biography Dr. Zhiyong Chen received his B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2000 and his Master of Philosophy and PhD degrees from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He is currently working as a Research Associate with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of Virginia. His research interests include neuronal dynamics, biological control, and nonlinear systems. He has published more than 30 technical articles including over 10 archival journal papers
*** ALL ARE WELCOME ***
Enquiries: Ms. Winnie Wong or Prof. Charlie Wang Chang-ling, Department of Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering, CUHK at 2609 8337. *ACAE Series (2005-06) is contained in the World-Wide Web home page at http://www.acae.cuhk.edu.hk/en/seminars/seminars_ieee.htm.