UCSB Engineering

Francesco Bullo

Professor

Contacts

Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

tel: (805) 893.5169
fax: (805) 893.8651
bullo@engineering.ucsb.edu

Personal web site

Sensor coverage

Research Description

Motion planning for autonomous vehicles, motion coordination for multi-agent networks, and geometric control
of mechanical systems. Applications include: (i) autonomous, reliable, and agile robots and (ii) coordinated and
adaptive networks of vehicles and embedded sensors.

Biography

His research interests include motion coordination for multi-agent networks, motion planning for autonomous vehicles, and geometric control of mechanical systems. He is a recipient of the 2003 ONR Young Investigator Award. He is the coauthor, with Andrew D. Lewis, of the book "Geometric Control of Mechanical Systems" (Springer, 2004, 0-387-22195-6) and, with Jorge Cortés and Sonia Martínez, of the book "Distributed Control of Robotic Networks" (Princeton, 2009, 978-0-691-14195-4). His students' papers were finalists for the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2002, 2005, 2007), and the American Control Conference (2005, 2006). He has published more than 150 papers in international journals, books, and refereed conferences. He serves on the Editorial Board of the "SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization."

Awards/Honors

• ACC Best Student Paper Award (as advisor), 2006
• ONR Young Investigator, 2003
• CDC Best Student Paper Award (as advisor), 2002
• Plenary Speaker: 2006 HSCC, 2006 Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control, 2005 Workshop Networked Embedded Sensing and Control, 2003 IFAC Workshop Lagrangian & Hamiltonian Methods in Control

Selected Publications

• Optimal sensor placement andmotion coordination for target tracking, Automatica, 42(4), 2006, 661–668, S.Martinez and F. Bullo
• Quantized control via locational optimization., IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 51(1), 2006, 2-13, F. Bullo and D. Liberzon
• Controlled symmetries and passive walking, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 50(7), 2005, 1025–1031, M. W. Spong and F. Bullo
• Coordination and geometric optimization via distributed dynamical systems, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization,, 44(5), 2005, 1543–1574, J. Cortes and F. Bullo
• Low-order controllability and kinematic reductions for affine connection control systems, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 44(3), 2005, 885–908, F. Bullo and A. D. Lewis
• Spatially-distributed coverage optimization and control with limited range interactions, ESAIM. Control, Optimisation & Calculus of Variations, 11, 2005, 691–719, J. Cortes, S. Martinez, and F. Bullo
• Coverage control for mobile sensing networks., IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 20(2), 2004, 243–255, J. Cortes, S. Martinez, T. Karatas, and F. Bullo., web link
• Trajectory design for mechanical systems: from geometry to algorithms., European Journal of Control, 10(5), 2004, 397–410, F. Bullo.
• Vehicle motion planning with time-varying constraints, AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 27(3), 2004, 506–508, W. T. Cerven, F. Bullo, and V. L. Coverstone
• Analysis and design of oscillatory control systems, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 48(7), 2003, 1164–1177, S.Martinez, J. Cortes, and F. Bullo