Electrical and Computer Engineering

College of Engineering and Applied Science

ECE Controls Research

Exciting investigations by Electrical and Computer Engineering Department faculty members are underway in the area of automatic control.

Dr. O’Brien has been fascinated by the challenges of high performance control, and for the last few years has endeavored to develop new nonlinear compensation methods to allow large feedback despite uncertain nonlinearities, often caused by imperfections in inexpensive actuators, that threaten stability. His patented multiple-path nonlinear dynamic compensator has been successfully implemented on UW’s two degree-of-freedom parallel robots used in precision tracking applications. He is interested in enhancing this approach for application to compliant robot actuator control for the next-generation industrial automation systems.

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