About Us

The Controls, Autonomy, and Rehabilitation Engineering (CARE) Lab at Auburn University is focused on the design of controllers for nonlinear dynamical systems. A philosophy of the lab is that novel enabling technologies and improved performance may be realized by including the full nonlinear model of the systems in their control design. However, significant complications arise since nonlinear equations of motion typically do not have an analytical solution and further challenges may arise from delays (e.g., state and/or input delays) in the system, combinations of discrete modes that switch between different continuous dynamic subsystems (i.e., hybrid or switched systems), or uncertainties in the model such as: uncertain disturbances, unmeasurable signals, or parametric uncertainties.

To address control design and analysis problems, the CARE Lab’s research is focused on the development of a Lyapunov control methodology, which incorporates the full nonlinear model in the design without requiring the solution of the nonlinear equations of motion. Specifically, research efforts are focused on adaptive, robust, and learning control development for uncertain nonlinear systems. Applications of interest include rehabilitation robotics, hybrid exoskeletons, and autonomous systems.