In addition to applications to robotics, the members of the RCL lab conduct research on fundamental aspects of control theory, focused in particular on nonlinear control of constrained systems. Two main techniques and their combinations are mainly considered: sliding mode control, and model predictive control. The goal of this research activity is to provide rigorous theoretical proofs of stability and performance of the developed algorithms. The main topics considered in the past years have been:
Sliding mode control (including higher-order sliding modes) applied to constrained systems, in particular with state constraints.
Combining sliding mode control and model predictive control in different continuous-time and discrete-time frameworks.
Model predictive control with guarantees of stability and performance given a fixed computation time.
This research is in scientific collaboration with the University of Pavia (Pavia, Italy), Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy) and IMT Institute for Advanced Studies (Lucca, Italy).