Manan Gandhi

(Advisor: Prof. Evangelos Theodorou) will propose a doctoral thesis entitled,
Decision-Making Architectures for Control of Uncertain Systems
On
Wednesday, April 19th at 01:00 p.m.

Engineering, Science, and Mechanics Building 108

Abstract
From aggressive driving, to drone racing, to cardiovascular control, each of these problems 
involves uncertain dynamics and a requirement to make decisions. There are classical and modern 
techniques for controlling dynamical systems which can favor safety, exploration, control 
performance, or other criteria. Information Theoretic Model Predictive Control (IF-MPC) has been 
utilized to significant effect for autonomous racing by optimizing the system free energy through 
forward sampling. This dissertation explores the ideas of incorporating safety directly into 
importance sampling for the control of uncertain systems. The underpinnings of Model Predictive 
Path Integral control are presented with its connections to both Information Theory and Bayesian 
inference. Current research on model learning for biological systems is presented with the aim of 
using more advanced control techniques. The core of the thesis is the development of a framework to 
perform safe model predictive control of stochastic dynamical systems while taking advantage of 
traditional control techniques to make decisions during operation. In the development of this novel 
framework, the foundation of modern, safe control is presented, along with state-of-the-art 
developments to enable safe control with fewer theoretical and computational restrictions. This 
work builds upon the idea of augmented importance sampling in IF-MPC to handle robustness, safety, 
and uncertainty in a general system. The control architecture presented here can handle both soft 
and hard constraints on the state of a dynamical system, as well as balance task completion with 
the notion of safety.

Committee
● Prof. Evangelos Theodorou – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
●  Prof. Wassim Haddad – School of Aerospace Engineering
●  Prof. Jonathan Rogers– School of Aerospace Engineering
●  Prof. Naira Hovakimyan– School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign
●  David Kozlowski – Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
●  Dr. Demetri Yannopoulos – Department of Medicine Cardiovascular Division, University of 
Minnesota