About Us

Welcome to Robotic and Autonomous Control (RAC) Lab. Our lab is located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University and is led by Dr. Vahid Azimi. The mission of our research is to develop the state-of-the-art control and optimization techniques applicable to real-world cyber-physical systems (CPSs) such as unmanned aerial/ground vehicles and legged robots, from theoretical studies to practical implementation. We seek rigorous approaches that integrate learning and optimization techniques, and control theory towards developing safe and robust control methodologies for uncertain dynamical CPSs operating in complex environments. The areas of interest in our lab are robotics, autonomous systems, learning, nonlinear control, and optimization.

News

• July 2022: Our paper “Active space control of underactuated robots: from adaptation to robustness to optimality” has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing.

• May 2022: Our paper “Robust adaptive control Lyapunov-barrier function for non-collocated control and safety of underactuated robotic systems" has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control.

• May 2022: Our paper “A robust time-varying Riccati-based control for uncertain nonlinear dynamical systems" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control.

• February 2022: Our paper “Filtering-based concurrent learning adaptive control: exponential convergence of system parameters and control coefficient" has been accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Control Conference.

• February 2022: Our paper “Core-shell enhanced single-particle model for LiFePO4 batteries" has been accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Control Conference.

• January 2022: Our paper “Adaptive control of wire-borne underactuated brachiating robots using control Lyapunov and barrier functions" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

• January 2022: Our paper “State estimation-based robust optimal control of influenza epidemics in an interactive human society" has been accepted for publication in the Information Sciences.

• September 2021: Our paper “Exponential control Lyapunov-barrier function using a filtering-based concurrent learning adaptive approach" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

• September 2021: Our paper “Impedance learning-based adaptive control for human-robot interaction" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

• August 2021: I will be serving as an Associate Editor for the BioRob 2022, IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics & Biomechatronics.

• July 2021: I will be joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University as an Assistant Professor, starting in Fall 2021.

• July 2021: Our paper “Real-time safety and control of robotic manipulators with torque saturation in operational space" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

• June 2021: Our paper “Global sensitivity analysis of aging parameters for a Lithium-ion battery cell using optimal charging profiles" has been nominated as the Best Student Paper Award Finalist in the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications.

• April 2021: Our paper “Global sensitivity analysis of aging parameters for a Lithium-ion battery cell using optimal charging profiles" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications.

• March 2021: Our paper “State estimation-based control of COVID-19 epidemic before and after vaccine development" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Process Control.

• March 2021: An extensive set of kinematic and kinetic human gait data for able-bodied and transfemoral amputee subjects along with the accompanying MATLAB code is now publicly available in Data & Code. The related paper can be found in Paper J5.

• January 2021: Our paper “Fast charging-minimum degradation optimal control of series-connected battery modules with DC/DC bypass converters based on an electrochemical-thermal-aging model” has been accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Control Conference.

• January 2021: Our paper “Adaptively robust control policy synthesis through Riemannian motion policies" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Control Systems Letters.

• January 2021: Our paper “Adaptive leader-follower control for multi-robot teams with uncertain network structure" has been accepted for presentation at the 2021 American Control Conference.

• January 2021: Vahid joined the Technical Committees on Manufacturing Automation and Robotic Control (MARC) and System Identification and Adaptive Control (SIAC) in the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS).

• September 2020: Our paper “An extensive set of kinematic and kinetic data for individuals with intact limbs and transfemoral prosthesis users" has been published in Applied Bionics and Biomechanics.

• August 2020: Our paper “Robust ground reaction force estimation and control of lower-limb prostheses" has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems.

• July 2020: Our paper “Cable estimation-based control for wire-borne underactuated brachiating robots: a combined direct-indirect adaptive robust approach" has been accepted for presentation at the 2020 Conference on Decision and Control.

• June 2020: Our paper “Feedback whole-body control of wheeled inverted pendulum humanoids using operational state space" has been accepted for presentation at the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

• June 2020: Vahid joined the Stanford Energy Control Lab in the Energy Resources Engineering Department at Stanford University to start a new research direction as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

• May 2020: Vahid received the 2020 Outstanding ECE Graduate Instructor Award from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

• February 2020: Our paper “Enhancing produce safety: state estimation-based robust adaptive control of a produce wash system" has been published in the Journal of Process Control.