Course on LMI optimization
(Didier Henrion, LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France, and FEL-CVUT, Prague, Czech Republic)

Universitaet Dortmund, Germany, 25-27 October 2006

Venue and schedule

The course is organized by the Process Control Laboratory of the University of Dortmund, in cooperation with the Graduate School of Production Engineering and Logistics. The course consists of four 180-minute (hopefully interactive) lectures (in Room MBE23 of the Mech. Engr. Dept., Campus Nord, Wed 25 Oct 13:30-16:30, Thu 26 Oct 8:30-11:30, Fri 27 Oct 8:30-11:30, 14:00-16:00) and one 3-hour lab (in Room BCI ZE11 of the Chem. Engr. Dept., Campus Nord, Thu 26 Oct 13:30-16:30). It is given in English. See also the schedule and orientation map.

Expected audience

The course is aimed at advanced Master and PhD students as well as researchers interested in optimization and its engineering applications.

Outline

In the afternoon of Wed 25 Oct, the course starts with fundamental mathematical features of linear matrix inequalities:
Part I.0: general introduction, course outline and material (0h30)
Part I.1: historical developments of LMIs, convexity, cones, duality, semidefinite programming (2h30)

Then on the morning of Thu 26 Oct we cover latest achievements in semidefinite programming and real algebraic geometry:
Part I.2: classification of convex semialgebraic sets that can be represented with LMIs, lift and project techniques (1h)
Part I.2b: non-convex BMIs (0h30)
Part I.3: Shor's relaxation, polynomial moments and sum-of-squares, Lasserre's hierarchy of LMI relaxations to solve non-convex polynomial optimization problems, including BMIs (1h30)

For the labs of Thu 26 Oct afternoon, we use the YALMIP interface, SeDuMi and PENBMI to define and solve LMI and BMI problems under the Matlab environment (1h30). We also briefly survey recent developments in semidefinite solvers and software packages:
Part I.4: basics of interior-point algorithms, latest achievements in software and solvers for LMIs and BMIs (1h30)

On Fri 27 Oct, the end of the course focuses on the application of LMI techniques to solve several control problems traditionally deemed as difficult, such as robustness analysis of linear and nonlinear systems, or design of fixed-order robust controllers with H-infinity specifications. The originality of the approach is in the simultaneous use of algebraic or polynomial techniques (as opposed to classical state-space methods) and modern convex optimization techniques:

Part II.1 and Part II.2: State-space methods - stability analysis: Lyapunov stability, pole placement in LMI regions, uncertain systems and robustness analysis - controller design: H2, Hinf, robust state-feedback and output-feedback design (3h)
Part II.3 and Part II.4: Polynomial methods - stability analysis: polynomials in control, robust stability of polynomials - controller design: robust fixed-order controller design (2h)

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to (in alphabetical order) Sebastian Engell, Helfried Peyrl, Philipp Rostalski, Gaurang Shah and Marten Voelker for their feedback.


Last updated on 13 December 2006