rojas@aic.dpl.scg.hac.com (07/21/90)
Joseph Maurice Rojas
Hughes Research Laboratories
Malibu, CA 90265
(213) 317-5765
rojas@math.berkeley.edu
rojas@aic.hrl.hac.com
July 18, 1990
Dear colleagues,
I was reading the paper "Stability Regions of Nonlinear Autonomous
Dynamical Systems" by Chiang, Hirsch, and Wu (IEEE Transactions on Automatic
Control, vol. 33, No. 1, Jan. 1988) when I noticed that "autonomous" in the
dynamical systems context meant non time-varying. My summer work deals with
the control of an autonomous submarine. In the context of AI, "autonomous"
means intelligent in some task-oriented sense. My project is to define and
characterize "instability" in the autonomous control logic of this submarine,
and I would like to know if the ideas of the above paper have been generalized
enough to include my project.
In particular, what is known about finding stability regions of
time-varying systems? What about systems with unknown time-varying parameters,
such as a submarine in unknown currents? I apologize in advance for any
abuse of terminology but control theory is not my strong point. I'm actually
a math graduate student specializing in modular functions. Any ideas or
leads regarding stability regions of time-varying systems would be greatly
appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time.
Sincerely,
Maurice
P.S.: I realize this bulletin board may not be the best place for my topic,
but is there a sci.control-theory or something like that? If so, please
let me know!