~ 1 ~

Room 3-618, FIT, Tsinghua University, Haidian Dist, Beijing 10084, China E-mail: cfins@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

http://www.cfins.au.tsinghua.edu.cn/

CFINS Newsletter Vol.2

2013.10

For the former volumes of CFINS newsletters, please visit our webpage:

http://cfins.au.tsinghua.edu.cn/newsletter/

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION 01

International Conference 01

Workshop in CASE2013, Madison to celebrate Prof. Yu-Chi Ho’s 80th birthday 01

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho and some other members of CFINS attended the 2013 IEEE

International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE2013) in

Madison

02

Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 Asian Control Conference in Istanbul, Turkey 02

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia and Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 American

Control Conference in Washington

02

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Yin Zhao attended IEEE ICCA 2013 02

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Cangqi Zhou attended ICNSC2013 03

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Weibo Gong, Prof. Xiaohong Guan, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia, and Dr.

Li Xia attended the CDC 2012 held in Hawaii, USA.

03

PhD student Qiang Li attended ICON2012 and ICC2013 03

Prof. Peter Luh, Prof. Leyuan Shi, Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and Prof. Qingshan Jia

attended the IEEE CASE 2012

03

Academic Talk in CFINS 03

History of Systems Control (1959-2013) via Personal Anecdotes by Prof. Yu-Chi Ho 04

Local properties of behavioral analysis in finance by Prof. Xi-Ren Cao 04

Information Relaxation and Duality in Stochastic Optimal Control by Dr. Enlu Zhou 05

Smart Buildings by Prof. Peter Luh 06

The geometry of (thin) SVD revisited for large-scale computations ---A series of IEEE

Control System Society distinguished lecture by Prof. Rodolphe Sepulche

06

Optimal and Robust Scheduling for Networked Control Systems by Dr.Guido Herrmann 07

Distributed Control of Networked Multi-agent Systems: Algorithms and Applications by

Prof. Wei Ren

08

ACADEMIC ACTIVITY 09

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho held symposiums with graduate students in CFINS 09

A party in Boston 09

Network Science Seminar 09

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS 10

Students’ Achievements 10

Two CFINS students got their Ph.D. degrees in this summer 10

Some publications of students of CFINS 10

Faculties’ Achievements 11

INCOMING EVENT 13

33rd Chinese Control Conference 13

RECRUITMENT ANNOUNCEMENT 13

COURSES IN FALL SEMESTER 14

International Communication

International Conference

To strengthen the international influence of the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS), every

faculty and student of CFINS actively attend the conference and activities of the international academic society.

Workshop in CASE2013, Madison to celebrate Prof. Yu-Chi Ho’s 80th birthday

To celebrate Prof. Ho’s forthcoming 80th birthday and his fruitful research career, some of his former students

who are very active in the academic community of automation, control, and systems flocked together on Aug. 17,

2013, Madison U.S., to organize a workshop dedicated to him. This workshop presents the basic ideas, important

fundamentals, the state of the art, and some future research directions in both PA (Perturbation Analysis) and OO

(Ordinal Optimization). Moreover, there are many “lessons to be learned” (especially for younger researchers) on

how research should be conducted and how fundamental problems in emerging areas should be analyzed, which are

instructed by Prof. Ho to many of his students with his unique perspective on the interplay between theory and

application.

Prof. Xiaolan Xie, Prof. Christos G. Cassandras, Prof. Li Xia, Prof. Peter B. Luh, Prof. Weiwei Chen, Prof.

Xiaohong Guan, and Prof. Weibo Gong, gave academic presentations, respectively. The workshop was organized by

Prof. (Samuel) Qing-Shan Jia (Tsinghua University), Prof. Chun-Hung Chen (George Mason University & National

Taiwan University), Prof. Loo Hay Lee (National University of Singapore), and Prof. Xiaohong Guan (Tsinghua

University & Xi’an Jiaotong University). Prof. Leyuan Shi (University of Wisconsin Madison), who is the general

chair of CASE 2013 and also a former PhD student of Prof. Ho, gave great support to this workshop. More than 40

researchers all over the world attended the whole day event.

After the workshop, the attendees took a dinner cruise over the beautiful lake in Madison and threw a

celebration party to celebrate Prof. Ho’s 80th birthday. A nice birthday cake was presented. Prof. Ho made a wish

and blow out the candles. Leyuan, Weibo, and Xiaohong went on the stage and shared with people the interesting

stories in old days, which just reminded almost everyone how much we have benefited from Prof. Ho, both in

academic research and in personal lives. Chun-Hung, Loo Hay, and Qing-Shan then presented a special version of

the red book (the book “Stochastic Simulation Optimization for Discrete Event System – Perturbation Analysis,

Ordinal Optimization, and Beyoud”, published by World Scientific Publishing, 2013. This book is written by Prof.

Ho’s students with the theme of the theories and results of PA and OO, and it is dedicated to Prof. Ho’s 80th birthday)

as a gift to Prof. Ho. This special version contains the signatures and blessing words of all the attendees.

Presentation by Prof. Xiaohong Guan Presentation by Prof. Chun-Hung Chen

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho and some other members of CFINS attended the 2013 IEEE International

Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE2013) in Madison

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho, Prof. Peter Luh, Prof. Weibo Gong, Prof. Xiaohong Guan, Prof. Leyuan Shi, Prof. Qingshan

Jia, Dr. Li Xia, and PhD students Zhanbo Xu and Zhe Liu attended the 2013 IEEE International Conference on

Automation Science and Engineering (CASE2013) in Madison, Wisconsin, USA during August 17-21, 2013. Prof.

Ho gave a plenary talk titled "History of Systems Control (1959-2013) Via Personal Anecdotes". In the conference

special workshop dedicated to celebrating Prof.Ho's 80th birthday, Prof. Peter Luh, Prof. Weibo Gong, Prof.

Xiaohong Guan, Prof. Leyuan Shi, Prof. Qingshan Jia and Dr. Li Xia gave academic presentations, respectively. In

the technical session of the conference, Dr. Li Xia and PhD students Zhanbo Xu, Zhe Liu gave 4 oral

presentations about the topic of building energy.

Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 Asian Control Conference in Istanbul, Turkey

Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 Asian Control Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. He gave an oral presentation with

the title on "Policy Iteration for Parameterized Markov Decision Processes and Its Application".

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia and Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 American Control

Conference in Washington

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia and Dr. Li Xia attended the 2013 American Control Conference in

Washington on June 17. Prof. Xi-Ren Cao gave a plenary talk titled "Event-Based Optimization of Stochastic

Systems and Its Applications to Social, Financial, and Engineering Problems". Dr. Li Xia gave an oral

presentation titled "Decentralized Control of Transmission Rates in Energy-Critical Wireless Networks".

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Yin Zhao attended IEEE ICCA 2013

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Yin Zhao attended IEEE ICCA 2013 (http://www.ieee-icca.org/) in

Hangzhou, during June 12th to June 14th, 2013. Yin Zhao gave an oral presentation on "Modeling individualized

complaint behavior in daily office environment using a novel one-class, multi-linear classifier".

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Cangqi Zhou attended ICNSC2013

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and PhD student Cangqi Zhou attended the 10th IEEE ICNSC2013 Conference

(www.icnsc2013.org) in France, during April 10th to April 12th, 2013. Cangqi Zhou gave an oral presentation on

"An Angle-based Dissimilarity for Accelerating the Clustering of Dynamic Data in Networks".

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Weibo Gong, Prof. Xiaohong Guan, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia, and Dr. Li

Xia attended the CDC 2012 held in Hawaii, USA.

Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, Prof. Weibo Gong, Prof. Xiaohong Guan, Prof. Qing-Shan Jia, and Dr. Li Xia attended the

CDC 2012 held in Hawaii, USA during 9th to 13rd, Dec 2012. Prof. Xi-Ren Cao and Prof. Weibo Gong made the

oral presentation titled "Analysis of Non-linear Behavior - Beyond Dynamic Programming" and "Stochastic

Differential Equations for Power Law Behaviors", respectively. Prof. Qing-Shan Jia reported the annual work

summary of technical committee of DEDS in 2012.

PhD student Qiang Li attended ICON2012 and ICC2013

PhD student Qianf Li attended the 18th IEEE ICON2012

(http://www.ieee-icon.org/2012/) in Singapore, during Dec 12 to Dec 14, 2012.

He gave an oral presentation on "Empirical Analysis and Comparison of

IPv4-IPv6 Traffic: A Case Study on the Campus Network".

During Jun 9 to Jun 13, 2013, Qiang Li attended the IEEE ICC2013

( http://www.ieee-icc.org/2013/ ) in Budapest, Hungary. He gave an oral

presentation on "An In-depth Measurement and Analysis of Popular Private

Tracker Systems in China ".

Prof. Peter Luh, Prof. Leyuan Shi, Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and Prof. Qingshan Jia attended

the IEEE CASE 2012

Prof. Peter Luh, Prof. Leyuan Shi, Prof. Qianchuan Zhao and A Prof. Qingshan Jia attended the IEEE CASE

2012 (http://www.case2012.org/) held in Seoul, Korea. Prof. Shi invited Prof. Zhao and Prof. Jia to serve for the

preparation of IEEE CASE 2013. Prof. Zhao and Prof. Jia reported the plan for activities of Technical Committee

on Smart Building of IEEE RAS (http://tab.ieee-ras.org/committeeinfo.php?tcid=41).

Academic Talk in CFINS

To enhance the international with the international society, many professors and scholars from oversea

universities had been invited by CFINS to give academic speeches about their recent researches.

History of Systems Control (1959-2013) via Personal Anecdotes

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Prof. Yu-Chi Ho, from Harvard University, gave a speech titled

History of Systems Control (1959-2013) via Personal Anecdotes in the Lecture Hall of FIT Building, Tsinghua

University, on Sept. 2, 2013.

In the spirit of the documentary film “History of the World in 2 hours (from the Big Bang to the 21st Century”)

and the 2007 book “History of the World via 100 Objects (from the Stone age to the Modern world)”, Prof

Ho proposes to deliver an account of this modern era of Systems and Control using his

own anecdotal personal experiences living through this period from the Kalman Filter to the age of Automation

and “Big Data” illustrating the developments. His speech contains four parts: Kalman Filter, the Witsenhausen

Problem and Decentralized Control, Manufacturing Automation and Simulation and Modeling.

Biography of Prof. Ho

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. and his Ph.D. in

Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Except for three years of full time industrial

work he has been on the Harvard faculty. Since 1969 he has been Gordon McKay Professor of

Engineering and AppliedMathematics. In 1988, he was appointed to the T. Jefferson Coolidge

Chair in Applied Mathematics and Gordon McKay Professor of Systems Engineering at

Harvard and as visiting professor to the Cockrell Family Regent’s Chair in Engineering at the

University of Texas, Austin. In 2001, he retired from teaching duties at Harvard and became a

Research Professor (2001-2006) and also was appointed to be a chair professor and chief

scientist (part time), at the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS),

Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing China. For more details please visit Prof. Ho’s

blog: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/?1565

Local properties of behavioral analysis in finance

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Prof. Xi-Ren Cao, from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, gave a speech titled Local properties of behavioral analysis in

finance in RM. 1-315 in FIT Building, Tsinghua University, Aug. 27, 2013.

In finance, it has been long realized that the expected utility theory cannot explain many irrational behavior,”

which is nonlinear in nature. One important property we discovered is the so called mono-linearity, which says that

Yaari’s representation in fact maintains some local linearity. With the mono-linearity, We proceed in three directions.

1. Just like in perturbation analysis, the mono-linearity allows use sample path based derivatives as the unbiased

estimate of the performance gradient; therefore, we develop algorithms for performance optimization in portfolio

management and develop theory for it. The results are consistent with those with Zhou’s; and the method can also

be applied to new problems. 2. The mono-linearity explains, in one angle, why Yaari’s theory cannot explain some

paradoxes, and we developed new axioms to extend Yaari’s axiomatic approach; in particular, we proved that the

famous independent axiom can be replaced by a local linear axiom, and thus simplified the theory. 3. bvWe study

other non-liner behavior when the mono-linearity does not hold; e.g., the theory with disappointment and more.

Biography of Prof. Cao

Xi-Ren Cao is a chair professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an affiliate member of the Institute for

Advanced Study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He has

worked as a consulting engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation, a research fellow at

Harvard University, and a reader, professor, and chair professor at HKUST. He owns three

patents in data- and tele- communications and has published three books in the areas of

performance optimization and discrete event dynamic systems. Selected honors include being

Fellow of IEEE and IFAC and best paper awards from the IEEE Control Systems Society and

the Institution of Management Science. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Discrete Event

Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications, as an Associate Editor at Large of the IEEE Transactions of Automatic

Control, as a Member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and as a Member on the

Technical Board of IFAC. His current research areas include financial engineering, stochastic learning and

optimization, performance analysis of economic systems, and discrete event dynamic systems. He holds a PhD

degree from Harvard University. For more details please visit: http://www.ece.ust.hk/~eecao/

Information Relaxation and Duality in Stochastic Optimal Control

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Dr. Enlu Zhou, Assistant Professor of University of Illinois

Urbana-Champaign, gave a speech titled “Information Relaxation and Duality in Stochastic Optimal Control” in

RM. 407 central main building, Tsinghua University, May. 31, 2013.

In this talk, Dr. Zhou talked about some recent research development in the approach of information relaxation

to explore duality in Markov decision processes and controlled Markov diffusions. The main idea of information

relaxation is to relax the constraint that the decisions should be made based on the current information and impose a

penalty to punish the access to the information in advance. The weak duality, strong duality and complementary

slackness results are then established, and the structures of optimal penalties are revealed. The dual formulation is

essentially a sample path-wise optimization problem, which is amenable to Monte Carlo simulation. The duality gap

associated with a sub-optimal policy/solution also gives a practical indication of the quality of the policy/solution.

Biography of Dr. Enlu Zhou

Dr. Enlu Zhou received the B.S. degree with highest honors in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University,

China, in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland,

College Park, in 2009. Since then she has been an Assistant Professor at the Industrial &

Enterprise Systems Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Her research interests include simulation optimization, Markov decision processes, and Monte

Carlo statistical methods. She is a recipient of the “Best Theoretical Paper” award at the 2009

Winter Simulation Conference and the 2012 AFOSR Young Investigator award. For more

details please visit: http://enluzhou.gatech.edu/

Smart Buildings

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Prof. Peter B. Luh gave a speech titled “Smart Buildings” in RM.

511 in central main building, Tsinghua University, May. 28, 2013.

Considering that energy use in buildings represents more than 40% of global energy consumption and that

humans spend 90% of the time indoors, technologies enabling smarter buildings can lead to significant reductions

in greenhouse gas emissions, and produce a comfortable, efficient, and safe environment. This is to be achieved

through smart sensing, advanced automation, and intelligent computing/communication technologies to efficiently

operate, monitor, and maintain buildings. In this talk, three selected topics will be highlighted, including 1)

Integrated Building Energy Management, 2) HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Condition) Fault Detection, and 3)

Crowd Guidance in Building Emergencies. For each topic, problem importance, challenges in problem formulation

and solution methodology as well as our novel ideas will be stressed. The goal is to demonstrate that Smart

Buildings are a fertile problem context for meaningful research and development. The talk will end with a brief

introduction of the Technical Committee on Smart Buildings of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS).

Biography of Prof.Peter B.Luh

Peter B. Luh received his B.S. from National Taiwan University, M.S. from M.I.T., and Ph.D. from Harvard

University. He has been with the University of Connecticut since 1980, and currently is the

SNET Professor of Communications & Information Technologies. He was the Head of the

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2006 to 2009. He is also a member

of the Chair Professors Group, Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS) in the

Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Professor Luh is a Fellow of

IEEE. He was the VP of Publications of RAS (2008-2011), the founding Editor-in-Chief of the

IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (2003-2007), and the

Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (1999-2003). His interests include Smart Power

Systems - smart grid, design of auction methods for electricity markets, robust renewable (wind and solar)

integration to the grid, and electricity load and price forecasting with demand response; Intelligent Manufacturing

Systems - planning, scheduling, and coordination of design, manufacturing, and service activities; Smart and Green

Buildings and Eco Communities - optimized energy management, HVAC fault detection and diagnosis, emergency

crowd guidance, and eco communities. For more details please visit: http://www.engr.uconn.edu/ece/luh.php

The geometry of (thin) SVD revisited for large-scale computations ---A series of IEEE

Control System Society distinguished lecture

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Prof. Rodolphe Sepulchre, from University of Liege, Belgium, gave

a speech titled “The geometry of (thin) SVD revisited for large-scale computations ---A series of IEEE Control

System Society distinguished lecture” in RM. 511 in central main building, Tsinghua University, Apr.17. 2013.

The talk introduced a Riemannian framework for large-scale computations over the set of low-rank matrices.

The foundation is geometric and the motivation is algorithmic, with a bias towards efficient computations

in large-scale problems. It is explored that how classical matrix factorizations connect the Riemannian geometry of

the set of fixed-rank matrices to two well-studied manifolds: the Grassmann manifold of linear subspaces and the

cone of positive definite matrices. The theory is illustrated on various applications, including low-rank Kalman

filtering, linear regression with low-rank priors, matrix completion, and the choice of a suitable metric for Diffusion

Tensor Imaging.

Biography of Prof. Rodolphe Sepulchre

Rodolphe Sepulchre received the engineering degree (1990) and the PhD degree (1994), both in mathematical

engineering, from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He was a BAEF fellow in

1994 and held a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1994 to

1996. He was a research associate of the FNRS at the Université Catholique de Louvain from

1995 to 1997. He moved in 1997 to the Université de Liège, where he is currently professor in

the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He was department chair from

2009 to 2011. He held a visiting position at Princeton University in 2002-2003 and at the Ecole

des Mines de Paris in 2009-2010. Since October 2012, he holds a part-time position at INRIA

Lille Europe as the director of the orchestron project. His current research interests are in control and coordination

problems on nonlinear spaces, optimization on manifolds, analysis and synthesis of networks of oscillators and

rhythmic systems. He co-authored the monographs "Constructive Nonlinear Control" (Springer-Verla, 1997) and

"Optimization on Matrix Manifolds" (Princeton University Press, 2008). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Systems

and Control Letters and an Associate Editor for SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization, the Journal of

Nonlinear Science, and Mathematics for Control, Signals, and Systems. In 2008, he was awarded the IEEE Control

Systems Society Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize. He is an IEEE fellow and an IEEE CSS distinguished

lecturer since 2010. More details are on: http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~sepulch/

Optimal and Robust Scheduling for Networked Control Systems

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Dr. Guido Herrmann gave a speech titled “Optimal and Robust

Scheduling for Networked Control Systems” in RM. 407 in central main building, Tsinghua University, Jan. 15,

2013.

Networked Control Systems (NCS) enable the integration of an increasing number of complex control systems

implemented on distributed control units. The problem is increased as nowadays the manufacturers tend to produce

their own control algorithms which need to be integrated into existing NCSs. This talk discusses theoretical analysis

approaches for the properties of NCSs from the control aspect but taking into consideration the issues related to the

practical implementation. The aim is to contribute to the bridging of the gap between control theory and computer

science since we believe that, if the bandwidth constraints of the communication medium are considered at the

controller design stage, the performance of the controller significantly improves. The tools are applicable to

time-triggered communication problems in industry, e.g. integration of control systems across automotive control

networks, e.g. Flexray, or aerospace systems, e.g. AFDX. The talk will at first explain NCS tools in the context of

linear robust control theory and NCS tools which are then extended to the context of nonlinear plant and control

systems. The results of this work are to be published in the book on "Optimal and Robust Scheduling for Networked

Control Systems" by Stefano Longo (University of Cranfield), Tingli Su (BIT), Guido Herrmann and Phil Barber

(Jaguar and LandRover) (March 20, 2013).

Biography of Dr Guido Herrmann

Dr Guido Herrmann received the German degree "Diplom-Ingenieur der Elektrotechnik" (with highest honours)

from the Technische University Berlin, Germany, and the Ph.D. degree from the

University of Leicester, UK, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2003, he was

a Senior Research Fellow at the Data Storage Institute in Singapore. From 2003 until

2005, he was a Research Associate, Fellow, and Lecturer at the University of Leicester.

He joined the University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, as a Lecturer in March 2007, and was a

Senior Lecturer from August 2009 until August 2012. In August 2012, he was promoted

to the position of a Reader in Control and Dynamics (Associate Professor). He was at

several occasions invited to visit Universities and research institutes in the USA, China, Malaysia and Singapore to

work with academics such as Professors Frank L Lewis and Sam S Ge. His research considers the development and

application of novel, robust and nonlinear control systems. He published more than 120 papers. He is editor of one

book and author of one book on "Optimal and Robust Scheduling for Networked Control Systems" (Mar 20, 2013).

Dr Herrmann’s PhD-student Dr S Stefano Longo, first author of the latter book, received the IET 2011 Control PhD

Award for his work in the area of networked control systems. Dr Herrmann was main advisor of four Doctorate

Degree holders and co-advisor of another four Doctorate Degree holders. His research portfolio as principal

investigator amounts to ￡ 747,000 (￡ 3,272,200 as co-investigator). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a

Technical Editor of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and an Associate Editor of the International

Journal on Social Robotics. He is leading the Nonlinear Robotics Control Group (NRCG) at the Bristol Robotics

Laboratory. For more details please visit: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~mexgh/gherrmann.htm

Distributed Control of Networked Multi-agent Systems: Algorithms and Applications

Invited by CFINS of Tsinghua University, Prof. Wei Ren gave a speech titled Distributed Control of

Networked Multi-agent Systems: Algorithms and Applications in RM. 3-620 in FIT building, Tsinghua University,

Dec. 4, 2012.

While autonomous agents that perform solo missions can yield significant benefits, greater efficiency and

operational capability will be realized from teams of autonomous agents operating in a coordinated fashion.

Potential applications for networked multiple autonomous agents include environmental monitoring, search and

rescue, space-based interferometers, hazardous material handling, and combat, surveillance, and reconnaissance

systems. Networked multi-agent systems place high demands on features such as low cost, high adaptivity and

scalability, increased flexibility, great robustness, and easy maintenance. To meet these demands, the current trend is

to design distributed control algorithms that rely on only local interaction to achieve global group behavior. The

purpose of this talk is to overview our recent research in distributed control of networked multi-agent systems.

Theoretical results on distributed leaderless consensus with vehicle dynamics including first- and second-order

linear dynamics, rigid body attitude dynamics, and Euler-Lagrange dynamics, distributed single-leader collective

tracking with reduced interaction and partial measurements, distributed multi-leader containment control with local

interaction, distributed average tracking with multiple time-varying reference signals, and distributed optimization

with non-identical constraints will be introduced. Application examples in multi-vehicle cooperative control

including rendezvous, formation keeping, and cooperative herding for wheeled mobile robots, UAV formation

flying, deep space spacecraft attitude alignment, and synchronization of networked robotic arms will also be

introduced.

Biography of Prof. Wei Ren

Wei Ren received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Brigham Young University,

Provo, UT, in 2004. From October 2004 to July 2005, he was a Postdoctoral Research

Associate with the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College

Park, MD. He was an assistant professor (August 2005 to June 2010) and an associate

professor (July 2010 to June 2011) with the Department of Electrical and Computer

Engineering, Utah State University, Logan. Since July 2011, he has been with the Department

of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Riverside, where he is currently an

Associate Professor. His research focuses on distributed control of multi-agent systems and autonomous control of

unmanned vehicles. He is an author of two books Distributed Coordination of Multi-agent Networks

(Springer-Verlag, 2011) and Distributed Consensus in Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control (Springer-Verlag, 2008).

Dr. Ren was the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2008. He is currently an Associate

Editor for Automatica and Systems and Control Letters. For more details please visit: http://www.ee.ucr.edu/~ren/

Academic Activity

Prof. Yu-Chi Ho held symposiums with graduate students in CFINS

On August 29, 2013, a symposium, which was presided by Prof. Xi Chen, was held in CFINS. Prof. Yu-Chi Ho

and many graduate students attended. Following the symposium held on Aug. 29, the second symposium, which

was presided by Dr. Li Xia, was held again in CFINS on Sept. 4. Prof. Yu-Chi Ho also attended. In these two

symposiums, Prof. Yu-Chi Ho answered many students' more specific questions and gave valuable advices on their

researches and work. Students benefited a lot.

A party in Boston

On June 8 2013 evening, Professor Christos G. Cassandras and his wife Carol gave an elegant dinner party for

other CFINS members and their wives in Boston. Good times were had by all attendees.

Network Science Seminar

To acknowledge the research process and improve the communication with each other, three network science

seminars had been held by PhD student Liyuan Sun in RM. 3-620 in FIT. During the seminars, several reports had

been given by students in CFINS. Every report launchs a hot discussion, every student asks questions and offers

their proposals. Everyone learns a lot.

Academic Achievements

Students’ Achievements

First of all, with enquiring mind and unremitting endeavors, many faculties and students in CFINS make great

achievementS in their own research fields.

Two CFINS students got their Ph.D. degrees in this summer.

In June, 2013, two CFINS students, including Hengtao Wang and Yonghao Huang got their Ph.D. degrees.

Hengtao Wang concentrates on the study of Reconfigurable Network System and his PhD

thesis’s title is “Cooperative Sensing and Topology Reconfiguration of Networked Information

Systems”. His dissertation supervisor is Prof. Xiaohong Guan .

Yonghao Huang concentrates on the study of stochastic optimization and his PhD thesis’s

title is “The Extension and Application of the Sensitivity-Based Optimization”. His dissertation

supervisor is Prof. Xi- Ren Cao and his co-adviser is Prof. Xi Chen.

Some publications of students of CFINS

C.B. Yan and Q.C. Zhao, “A Unified Effective Method for Aggregating Multi-machine Stages in

Production Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol.58, No. 7, pp. 1674-1687, 2013.

H. Liu, Q.C. Zhao, N.J. Huang and X. Zhao, “A Simulation Based Tool for Energy Efficient Building

Design for a Class of Manufacturing Plants,” IEEE Transactions on Automation Sciences and Engineering, Vol.10,

No.1, pp.117-123, 2013.

S. Adriaenssens, H. Liu, M. Wahed and Q.C. Zhao, “Evaluation and Optimization of a Traditional

North-Light Roof on Industrial Plant Energy Consumption”, Energies, Vol. 6, pp. 1944-1960, 2013.

D.X. Liu, X.H. Guan, Y.T. Du and Q.C. Zhao, “Measuring indoor occupancy in intelligent buildings

using the fusion of vision sensors,” Measurement Science and Technology, Vol. 24, No. 074023, pp. 1-13, 2013.

M. Li, P. Luh, L-D. Michel, Q. Zhao and X. Luo, “Corrective line switching with security constraints for

the base and contingency cases,” IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp.125-133, 2012.

H.T. Wang, Q.C. Zhao, X.H. Guan, Q.S. Jia and L. Li, “Reconfiguring Networked Infrastructures by

Adding Wireless Communication Capabilities to Selected Nodes,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications,

Accepted.

Z. Liu, X. Chen, Z.Y. Jiang, L.F. Qiao, and X.H. Guan. Asynchronous Latency Analysis on Decentralized

Iterative Algorithms for Large Scale Networked Systems. The 32nd Chinese Control Conference (CCC 2013). July

26-28, 2013, Xi'an, China.

Z. Liu, X. Chen, X.T. Xu, and X.H. Guan. A Decentralized Optimization Method for Energy Saving of

HVAC Systems. The 9th IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE CASE

2013). August 17-21, 2013, Madison, WI, USA.

Y. Guo, X. Chen. A Framework for Cross-domain Recommendation in Folksonomies. International

Conference on Information and Applied Electronics(ICIAE), 15th to 16th June 2013，Colombo, Sri Lanka

Z.J. Cheng, L. Xia, Q.C. Zhao, Y. Zhao, F.L. Wang, and F.T. Song, “Integrated control of blind and lights

in daily office environment,” Proceedings of the 9th annual IEEE International Conference on Automation Science

and Engineering (CASE’2013), August 17-21, 2013, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

Y. Zhao, Q.C. Zhao, L. Xia, Z.J. Cheng, F.L. Wang, and F.T. Song, “A unified control framework of

HVAC system for thermal and acoustic comforts in office building,” Proceedings of the 9th annual IEEE

International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE’2013), August 17-21, 2013, Madison,

Wisconsin, USA.

H.T. Wang, Q.S. Jia, Y.L. Lei, Q.C. Zhao and X.H. Guan, “Estimation of occupant distribution by

detecting the entrance and leaving events of zones in building,” Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International

Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration, Hamburg, Germany, Sept. 13-15, 2012.

H.T. Wang, Q.C. Zhao, Q.S. Jia, and X.H. Guan, “Efficient topology optimization for a wired networked

system by adding wireless communication,” 2012 American Control Conference, Montréal, Canada, Jun. 27-29,

2012.

Faculties’ Achievements

Some grants and awards received by faculties of CFINS in this year:

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao is invited to serve as an associate editor for a new IEEE journal "IEEE Transactions

on Control of Network Systems".

PhD student Yin Zhao and Prof. Qianchuan Zhao's paper was nominated one of the finalists for the Best

Automation Paper Award in IEEE ICRA 2013.

Networking The World, Prof.. Peter Luh received the Prestigious Engineering Award.

Prof. Peter B. Luh won the RAS Pioneer Award, 2013.

Prof. Qing-Shan Jia is voted as the chair of IEEE CSS Beijing Chapter, 2013.

Prof. Houmin Yan’s paper (co-authored with Buzacott and Zhang) "Risk Analysis of Commitment-Option

Contracts with Forecast Updates" (IIE Transactions, Vol. 43, 2011, 415-431) has been awarded the Best

Paper Prize in in Scheduling and Logistics from the Institute of Industrial Engineers(IIE), 2012 .

Selected publications of faculties of CFINS in this year:

G.Y. Tu, P. B. Luh and Q.C. Zhao, “Joint replacement policy for opportunistic Lagrangian relaxation

method,” ACTA AUTOMATICA SINICA, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp.259-267, 2013.

Z. Mao, F.L. Wang, T. Gao, Y.C. Dai, Q.C. Zhao, Y. Zhao, B. Sun, J. Guo, and F. Zhang, “Research of the

Room Occupant Complaining Behavior Pattern for the Indoor Environmental Control,” Advanced

Materials Research, Vol. 374 – 377, pp.1064-1067, 2012.

Q.C. Zhao, Y. Shen, “Topology control of power systems with uncertainties,” Journal of University of

Science and Technology of China, Vol. 42, No. 5, pp.365-371, 2012.

F.Z. Nian and Q.C. Zhao, “Pinning synchronization with low energy cost”, Nonlinear Science and

Numerical Simulation, Accepted

Q.S. Jia, “Efficient computing budget allocation for simulation-based optimization with stochastic

simulation time,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, to appear.

Q.S. Jia, “Efficient computing budget allocation for simulation-based policy improvement,” IEEE

Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 342-352, Apr. 2012.

Q.S. Jia, “Event-Based Optimization with Lagged State Information,” the 31st Chinese Control

Conference, July 25-27, 2012, Hefei, China.

Q.S. Jia and L. Xia, “Approximate event-based optimization for evacuation,” the 11th International

Workshop on Discrete Event Systems(WODES2012), Guadalajara, Mexico, Oct. 3-5, 2012.

Q.S. Jia, Z. Wen, and L. Xia, “Event-based sensor activation for indoor occupant distribution

estimation,” the 12th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics, and Vision

(ICARCV2012), Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, Dec. 5-7, 2012.

L. Xia and X.R. Cao, “Perturbation Analysis, Dynamic Programming, and Beyond,” Chapter 7 (pp.

127-156) of the Book Stochastic Simulation Optimization for Discrete Event Systems –Perturbation

Analysis, Ordinal Optimization, and Beyond, World Scientific Publishing, 2013.

L. Xia, Q.S. Jia, and X.R. Cao, “A tutorial on event-based optimization -- A new optimization

framework,” Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications, 2013, in press.

L. Xia, “Event-based optimization of admission control in open queueing networks,” Discrete Event

Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications, 2013, DOI 10.1007/s10626-013-0167-1.

L. Xia and B. Shihada, “Max-Min optimality of service rate control in closed queueing networks,” IEEE

Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. 58, pp. 1051-1056, 2013.

L. Xia and X.R. Cao, “Performance optimization of queueing systems with perturbation realization,”

European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 218, pp. 293-304, 2012.

L. Xia and Q.S. Jia, “Policy iteration for parameterized Markov decision processes and its

application,” Proceedings of the 9th Asian Control Conference, June 23-26, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey.

L. Xia and B. Shihada, “Decentralized control of transmission rates in energy-critical wireless networks,”

Proceedings of the 2013 American Control Conference, June 17-19, 2013, Washington, DC., USA.

L. Xia and Q.S. Jia, “Game theoretical control of service rates in closed Jackson networks,” Proceedings

of the 25th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC’2013), May 25-27, 2013, Guiyang, China.

L. Xia, “Optimal control of customer admission to an open Jackson network,” Proceedings of the 31st

Chinese Control Conference (CCC’2012), July 25-27, 2012, Hefei, China.

L. Xia, “Optimality property of service rates in closed Jackson networks,” the 2012 INFORMS

International Conference, June 24-27, 2012, Beijing, China

Incoming Event

33rd Chinese Control Conference

The 33rd Chinese Control Conference (CCC2014) is locally organized by the Nanjing University of Science

and Technology, and will be held in Nanjing, a world-famous and ancient capital city of China, on July 28-30, 2014.

Prof. Qianchuan Zhao, served as the PC Co-Chair (or the Conference Co-Chair) of CCC since 2012, help organize

the conference.

The Chinese Control Conference is an annual and international conference initiated by the Technical

Committee on Control Theory (TCCT), Chinese Association of Automation (CAA). It provides a forum for

scientists and engineers over the world to present their new theoretical results and techniques in the field of systems

and control. The conference consists of plenary talks, panel discussions, invited sessions, pre-conference workshops,

oral sessions and poster sessions etc. for academic communications.

Recruitment Announcement

The Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS) is an international research center dedicated to

advancing both the fundamental and application-oriented researches in the fields of automation science, system

engineering, operations research, etc. CFINS aims to provide a physical and intellectual environment for the

intelligent analysis, design, and operation of complex and networked systems such as power systems and new

energy, building energy, manufacturing systems, computer and communication networks, and supply chains by

making innovative use of analytical methods, optimization algorithms, and information technology.

CFINS invites applicants in a broad area including control theory, system engineering, operations research, and

computer science. We are particularly interested in candidates with a background in building energy, power systems

and new energy. The positions of faculty or post-doctor are both provided. Candidates are expected to hold a PhD.

degree from renowned universities and have outstanding research records. Applications should be submitted with

PDF/word files and the following materials should be included: a cover letter indicating the position of interest, a

curriculum vita with a list of publications, statements of research and teaching interests, and the contact information

of at least 3 academic references.

All the applications should be sent to: cfins@tsinghua.edu.cn. Applicants are encouraged to visit our website

http://cfins.au.tsinghua.edu.cn/ to find more information about our research center.

Courses in Fall Semester

Courses offered by CFINS faculties in this fall semester

Course Name Instructor

Linear System Theory Qianchuan Zhao

Scheduling Theory and Algorithms Xi Chen

Complex System Performance Evaluation and Optimization Qing-Shan Jia

Computer Network and Applications Li Xia