Papers

Unlocking the potential of tiny aerial robots requires order of magnitude improvements in the performance of embedded edge control. In particular, although recent cached model predictive control (MPC) solvers can handle the fast system dynamics and complex constraints required for agile drone flight, their computational demands remain prohibitive for resource-constrained robots, forcing prior implementations to operate at reduced control rates. AccelMPC overcomes this challenge through an end-to-end co-design approach that jointly optimizes the solver algorithm, numerical representation, hardware mapping, and physical integration. AccelMPC pairs a co-designed FPGA-accelerated alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based MPC solver with a custom 6g PCB, providing high-bandwidth communication for deployment on a 35g Crazyflie. Hardware experiments demonstrate 1 kHz onboard constrained MPC with dynamic obstacles, up to 15.6x faster solve times and 195.4x improvement in energy-delay product over state-of-the-art embedded microcontroller-based solvers, all while scaling to optimization problems with over 20,000 optimization variables and a comparable number of constraints. We release our PCB design files, firmware, and FPGA solver code open source.

The demand for continuous, high-resolution aerial monitoring is driving interest in High- Altitude Pseudo-Satellites (HAPS), which offer a cost-effective alternative to satellites with greater flexibility. While HAPS platforms provide valuable Earth observation potential, se- lecting an optical sensor requires balancing resolution and payload constraints, given their lightweight structures. We propose a multidisciplinary concept to enhance the Earth obser- vation capabilities of HAPS using a commercially available, weight-efficient distributed camera network, combined with advanced image processing and active vibration control. A super- resolution pipeline is introduced, where images from individual cameras are preprocessed and fed into a super-resolution algorithm. The low structural rigidity of HAPS platforms increases their sensitivity to low-frequency vibrations, which must be mitigated through active control to preserve imaging performance. A nominal H-infinity mixed-sensitivity controller is designed to suppress resonance peaks at camera locations. The methodology is experimentally validated on a simplified wing platform designed for real-time testing. Quantitative evaluation based on nine metrics demonstrates significant image quality improvements, highlighting the effectiveness of H-infinity control in mitigating low-frequency elastic modes and stabilizing the platform for super- resolution. These results show that lightweight commercial sensors, combined with advanced image processing and control, can deliver high-quality imaging for future HAPS remote sensing missions.

This paper develops a novel distributed optimization algorithm based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) to solve hierarchical optimization problems over tree-structured networks, termed hierarchical ADMM (hADMM), with a particular focus on enhancing communication efficiency across the network. By rearranging the augmented Lagrangian to establish a query-response communication mechanism between nodes that explicitly exploits the hierarchical tree structure, the proposed algorithm significantly reduces communication costs compared to existing ADMM-based methods for hierarchical optimization. Furthermore, hADMM guarantees asymptotic convergence under convexity assumptions. We also present a convergence rate analysis based on linear matrix inequalities to characterize the maximum theoretically achievable convergence rates across different network topologies, showing that the proposed hADMM attains linear convergence under mild conditions. Three numerical experiments demonstrate that hADMM is compatible with arbitrary tree network structures and outperforms existing approaches in terms of communication efficiency.

Effective control of bioprocesses is particularly challenging due to the intrinsic nonlinearity and dynamic variability of living-cell systems. In microalgae-based photobioreactors (PBRs), maintaining stable pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) levels is critical for optimal growth and productivity, yet their strong coupling and sensitivity to environmental fluctuations make multivariable control difficult. This study proposes a novel hybrid offline-online Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) framework for simultaneous pH and DO regulation, leveraging Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) agents to achieve a fully data-driven and model-free control solution. The agents are trained using historical data generated by an expert system, eliminating the need for direct experimentation with the environment. After deployment, the agents operate autonomously, continuously fine-tuning their policies daily to adapt to evolving process dynamics and reject fast transient disturbances. Experimental validation in an open, industrial-scale PBR at the University of Almeria demonstrated the framework's capability to maintain stable operation under realistic conditions. The results confirm that model-free MARL control provides a robust and adaptive alternative for complex bioprocess environments.

A verifier for robot policies reads a candidate behavior and returns a score for how well it did, used both to evaluate vision-language-action policies and to train them. Verifiers range from success detectors and reward models to runtime monitors, safety filters, and temporal-logic specifications. We survey roughly 150 verifiers and compare them along two properties. Availability is how much a verdict costs, how early in a rollout the verdict arrives, and how often a verdict can be asked for. Availability rises as verdicts get cheaper, earlier, and denser. Credibility is how much a high score tells us about the task. Credibility falls as the judgment becomes gameable and self-serving. We group the verifiers by who supplies the judgment: human verifiers, rule-based and formal verifiers, learned and pretrained verifiers, and model-intrinsic verifiers. Across the four families, we find that credibility falls as availability rises. Regardless of who supplies the judgment, there is no free checker. We then examine what validates a verifier itself, and how much a high score tells us. Three measures appear in the literature: agreement with human labels, the performance of the policy it trains, and behavior under reward hacking. We close with nine metrics that make a verifier claim checkable, and coordinates for the verifiers still to be built.

Sampling-Based Model-Predictive Control (MPC) algorithms are a flexible class of controllers used for navigation on a wide range of robotic systems. Historically, such approaches have lacked hard safety guarantees, a shortcoming which we remedy in this work by computing guaranteed reachable-set overapproximations online with a fast, interval-based pipeline. We show that our method achieves similar performance to a state-of-the-art reachability-based planner without the need for the expensive pre-computation step, and can be scaled to systems that are infeasible using existing approaches. Finally, we demonstrate that our technique reduces safety violations by over 99% in a racing simulation and successfully controls a model racecar on real hardware experiments without crashes.

Hosting capacity - the maximum additional capacity a network can accommodate without violating operational limits - is a key metric in distribution system planning and operation. Decisions on grid reinforcements and the deployment of flexibility management require not only the worst-case HC but also an understanding of the distribution of HC under different likelihoods in load and generation patterns. Quantile-resolved HC distributions provide this view by expressing HC as a function of an acceptable operational limit exceedance likelihood. Monte Carlo sampling is the established approach for computing such distributions but demands large computational resources. Approximations sacrifice either accuracy, the ability to capture uncertainty correlations, or scalability when assessing real-world networks. This paper introduces a computationally efficient method for calculating distributions for quantile-resolved HC. It uses a representation of load samples as multivariate normal distribution, propagated through a linearized power flow model. This allows for leveraging a re-parametrized AC-OPF problem for each hosting capacity quantile. Benchmarking against Monte Carlo-based methods on realistic LV networks demonstrates that the proposed method achieves comparable accuracy with a mean deviation of approx. 3%, while reducing computational time by orders of magnitude. For the exemplary networks the computational time decreases from 11 min to 2 s, and 38 h to 50 s, respectively. The method's scalability is also suitable for recalculation in 15-minute cycles encountered in DSO practice for e.g., real-time grid management.

Modern science and engineering increasingly rely on time-varying data, yet the mathematical tools used to model temporal phenomena are often developed within separate disciplines, obscuring common principles and limiting the transfer of ideas across fields. This chapter presents the theory of narratives, an abstract framework for time-varying objects of any mathematical kind that supports both theoretical investigations and applications. To illustrate this perspective, the chapter develops three vignettes, each illustrating a different research direction. The first addresses a general concern: What information loss can occur when switching between different representations of temporal data? The second concerns structural and algorithmic approaches: How can we systematically decompose time-varying data into simple pieces and obtain invariants describing its structural complexity? The third is an application to control theory: How can we model multi-agent systems with switching communication topologies? More important than any individual vignette, the central message of this invitation is that a suitable abstract perspective can organize and guide research across remarkably diverse mathematical and scientific domains.

To address the existing challenges in fault detection for voltage source converter-based multi-terminal DC (VSC-MTDC) grids, this paper proposes an intelligent fault and lightning detection algorithm based on S transform and Residual Network with hybrid attention mechanism (RWHAM).The DC line double-ended initial current traveling waves (ICTWs) are first converted into time-frequency matrices by performing S transform and then visualized as a two-dimensional image. The image effectively characterizes the time-frequency features of ICTWs under different fault and lightning conditions, making it easier to extract critical features for the models. Next, the RWHAM model is constructed and the images are fed into the model to detect internal and external faults and lightning interference. The weight of the key information in the image is increased by hybrid attention mechanism, which in turn improves the fault detection ability of the RWHAM model. Extensive simulations involving 21,620 distinct cases on PSCAD/EMTDC validate the algorithm's high accuracy and rapid response across different types of faults and lightning interference. Furthermore, it exhibits excellent generalization ability when the parameters of VSC-MTDC grids change.

Grid tools are separated by timescales: steady-state analysis is performed by power flow (PF), whereas the fastest dynamics are captured by electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation. Although operating at varying timescales, different tools should produce consistent results when analyzing the same grid conditions. However, the PF steady-state solution does not match the time-to-infinity EMT response. This mismatch exists because simplified device models in PF are inconsistent with the "ground truth" EMT models derived from first principles. As inverter-based resources (IBRs) and data centers strip away inertia and operating reserves, approximations used in PF risk grid security by missing violations. To address this, we introduce a steady-state framework that uses full-physics EMT models for high-fidelity steady-state grid analysis. The challenge lies in systematically formulating algebraic frequency-domain representations of dynamic power devices that are naturally described in state-space form. Our tool, SALT (Steady-state After Last Transients), constructs steady-state representations that exactly capture grid device physics when embedded into transmission networks. The approach exploits the structural properties of power device models and the single-harmonic, balanced nature of the transmission system. Results demonstrate SALT achieves EMT steady-state accuracy while delivering a 1x10^6 times speedup. We demonstrate that SALT can capture security threats in contingency scenarios without exception — whereas PF-based analyses reported 75% fewer rated line violations, 18% fewer Q-limit violations, and 7% fewer voltage violations.

As US power markets contend with growing demand for firm generation, the nuclear industry has offered Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). However, how these concepts would fare in a rapidly evolving power grid is unclear, given the paucity of operational examples. Current literature, informed by substantial cost escalations for traditional nuclear plants, focuses on the investment costs SMRs need to achieve for private investment feasibility. However, this work finds that the operating and marginal costs of SMRs are more critical to economic feasibility in market environments. This work dispatches SMRs using a flexible operations model, considering revenue from two main electric markets, capacity and wholesale energy markets, with and without policy support. Manufacturer advertised costs for investment and operating costs are used, with fuel costs calculated from manufacturer provided design parameters. Results indicate that SMRs are uneconomical primarily because investment cost reductions are offset by increased marginal costs. As such, an environment of prices and subsidies beyond historic norms are necessary to attract private investment at manufacturer advertised cost benchmarks. Current SMRs are as profitable as advanced estimates of the AP1000 traditional nuclear reactor, and if investment costs escalate at the average rate for nuclear projects, they are similar to Vogtle 3 & 4. In projected future power markets, reductions in marginal cost may be more beneficial than those in investment costs.

Certainty-equivalence model predictive control (CE-MPC) is widely used for its simplicity and efficiency, but theoretical guarantees under asynchronous feedback remain limited. This paper establishes stability and performance guarantees for asynchronous CE-MPC of input-constrained nonlinear systems. We first derive a nominal stability condition and competitive-ratio bound that explicitly account for inter-execution intervals without prescribing a feedback mechanism. A value-function perturbation analysis for quadratic stage costs then accommodates additive, potentially non-smooth model mismatch without constraint qualification conditions. Combining these results yields stability criteria and competitive-ratio bounds for CE-MPC under general asynchronous feedback, including event/self-triggered and multi-step MPC. The guarantees explicitly relate prediction horizon, inter-execution time, and uncertainty magnitude, quantifying performance degradation relative to an ideal infinite-horizon controller. These results clarify tradeoffs between feedback frequency, model accuracy, and horizon length, guiding asynchronous MPC design using approximate or learned models.

We study optimal input design over a finite horizon for linear dynamical systems. The goal is to minimize a weighted inverse-covariance (information) criterion subject to an energy budget. The set of covariances achievable by causal policies is convex but lacks a tractable explicit description, ruling out projection-based methods. We show that Frank–Wolfe applies naturally: each linear minimization subproblem is a budget-constrained finite-horizon linear quadratic (LQ) problem, solvable by a Riccati recursion and one-dimensional bisection over a Lagrange multiplier. Using smoothness of the objective over the feasible set, we establish an $\mathcal{O}(1/M)$ convergence rate for the objective value, while strong convexity yields an $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{M})$ rate for the iterates. We further extend the framework to input design for system identification with unknown dynamics and adaptive online LQR, and illustrate the approach numerically.

Nonlinear Output Frequency Response Functions (NOFRFs) provide a one-dimensional frequency-domain representation of nonlinear dynamics, enabling direct decomposition of an output spectrum into contributions from different orders of nonlinearity. NL-FRA (NonLinear Frequency Response Analysis) is an open-source MATLAB package implementing a data-driven Least Squares (LS) method for estimating NOFRFs directly from system input-output data. It provides an integrated workflow for NOFRF estimation, validation, and visualisation, together with nonlinear transmissibility analysis. The package supports different types of inputs, i.e. general band-limited, multi-one and harmonic inputs, and includes routines for identifying the frequency ranges over which each nonlinear order contributes to the output. Furthermore, since the LS approach estimates NOFRFs directly from input-output data, it can be applied to experimental measurements or data generated using any suitable dynamic model of the system. The software facilitates interpretable nonlinear frequency-domain analysis for applications including fault diagnosis, condition and structural health monitoring, and biomedical engineering.

Hydronic radiator systems are among the most widely used heating systems in buildings. In the literature, radiator heat outputs are often assumed to be independent of one another and arbitrarily adjustable in time when designing controllers. However, in practice, radiators are supplied by one or multiple common heat sources and are hydraulically coupled through the water circulation system. Maintaining occupant comfort in multi-zone buildings therefore requires not only an appropriate supply temperature but also proper hydraulic balancing to distribute the available water flow according to the heating demand of each zone. To this end, we develop a grey-box thermal model that captures the hydraulic interactions among radiators and the effects of radiator valves, circulation pumps, and heat sources. In a real building, we show that accounting for hydraulic interactions reduces the root mean square error (RMSE) between the measured and modeled zone temperatures by approximately 11% compared with a model that neglects these interactions. Additionally, we integrate the developed model into a model predictive control (MPC) framework for dynamic hydraulic balancing that jointly optimizes valve openings and the supply temperature to maintain thermal comfort in each zone while reducing energy consumption. Through both real-world experiments and numerical case studies, we demonstrate that, compared with existing MPC formulations that neglect hydraulic interactions or do not control radiator valves, the proposed MPC reduces comfort-range violations by at least 27% while requiring a similar or even lower cumulative supply temperature.

We study risk-sensitive evolutionary learning dynamics and their long-run equilibrium selection behaviors in coordination games. Agents' risk attitudes enter through the classical entropic risk measure, which evaluates opponent-induced payoff uncertainty and feeds into noisy best responses under two standard revision protocols: best response with mutations and logit choice. We first analyze $2\times 2$ coordination games in both single-population symmetric and two-population asymmetric settings. In the single-population setting, unlike the risk-neutral case where the dynamics are known to favor the risk-dominant equilibrium, we show that risk sensitivity can change the stochastically stable outcome: a greater risk-seeking attitude favors the payoff-dominant equilibrium, while a greater risk-averse attitude favors the maximin equilibrium. Thus, the population's risk attitude may act as a control knob for long-run equilibrium selection. In both population settings, we also identify a robust regime: any super-dominant equilibrium is stochastically stable for all risk attitudes, under both protocols, and across populations. We further extend the single-population analysis to symmetric $k$-action games, which include symmetric $k$-action coordination games as a special case, under risk-sensitive best response with mutations. In this setting, we show that, for sufficiently large populations, sufficiently risk-seeking agents uniquely select the strongly payoff-dominant equilibrium when it exists, whereas sufficiently risk-averse agents uniquely select the strongly maximin equilibrium when it exists. These results show that entropic risk sensitivity may serve as a systematic mechanism for steering equilibrium selection in evolutionary games, beyond the classical risk-neutral benchmark.

This paper develops a data-driven, output-feedback approach to the infinite-horizon optimal control of high-dimensional nonlinear systems with unknown and unstable equilibria, using sparse partial observations. The approach builds on the transfer-plus-regulation decomposition of the infinite-horizon problem: a finite-horizon nonlinear transfer drives the system into a region where the dynamics are well-approximated by a linear model about the unknown operating point, and an infinite-horizon linear regulator identified within that region completes stabilization. We extend this framework to the partially observed setting by combining an ARMA-based information-state construction with a two-stage control architecture: an iterative linear quadratic regulator (iLQR) approach on the information state drives the system to the equilibrium neighborhood, discovered implicitly without prior knowledge of the target, and a locally identified time-invariant ARMA model provides the infinite-horizon regulator for asymptotic stabilization. The method requires no adjoint solver, reduced-order model, or full-state access. We validate the approach on high-fidelity Navier-Stokes simulations of the cylinder wake at $\mathrm{Re}=100$ using only eight surface pressure sensors, an order of magnitude fewer than recent model-based RL methods. The controller achieves complete suppression of vortex-shedding-induced lift oscillations and a $44\%$ reduction in total drag relative to the uncontrolled baseline.

This paper utilizes the autocorrelation of frequency and voltage measurements to identify, quantify and classify local and global properties of power system dynamics. The analysis is based on measurements with various resolutions (20 ms, 1 s, and 1 min) from several nodes of the Irish All-Island Power System (AIPS). Simulations based on stochastic differential algebraic equations on an IEEE benchmark system support conclusions drawn from real-world data.

This paper explores stabilizing traffic flow using a minimum number of autonomous vehicles (AVs) under control constraints. In contrast to most studies, we consider a heterogeneous parameter setup scenario for human-driven vehicles (HVs) to reflect real-world differences in driving behavior. While current literature uses an H-Infinity based sufficient condition to ensure the string stability of traffic flow, this often yields a conservative lower bound on the AV penetration rate to stabilize traffic flow. To reduce such conservativeness and obtain a less conservative lower bound, we ensure the string stability of traffic flow by directly imposing the possession of no growing eigenmodes. We also systematically find a minimum number of required AVs and solve for the optimal control parameters via nonlinear optimization. We finally assess the intended conservativeness reduction via numerical simulations. Quantitatively, applying our algorithm to the homogeneous HV baseline in the literature (the result built upon an H-Infinity based sufficient condition) reduces (improves) the AV penetration rate by 17.14% while ensuring the string stability of traffic flow. We observe a trade-off between the stabilization/performance degradation and the number of utilized identical AVs. Quantitatively, our last numerical simulation corroborates that the AV penetration rate can be reduced by 61.54% at the expense of 27.66% higher position difference deviation from the equilibrium and a 92.47% degradation in the real stability radius (RSR)—a metric to measure the stability robustness under the perturbation/uncertainty—associated with the aggregated linearized dynamics while ensuring the string stability of traffic flow. This trade-off helps engineers/operators make better traffic control decisions.

In distributed model predictive control for multi-drone collision avoidance, a fixed prediction horizon forces a compromise: a short horizon is inexpensive but reacts late to approaching neighbors, whereas a long one anticipates conflicts at a per-step cost that grows superlinearly with its length. We propose a conflict-predictive variable horizon that each drone sets locally, leaving the distributed model predictive control itself unchanged. From a short history of observed positions, a drone extrapolates the flight lines of its neighbors, tests each against its own using confidence funnels that narrow with prediction range, and obtains each time to conflict in closed form. The horizon is then the smallest admissible value whose planning window covers the farthest predicted conflict. It collapses to its minimum in clear airspace and grows only when a conflict lies ahead. Provided this minimum meets a single computable feasibility bound, we prove that recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability are preserved for every horizon the policy can select. These guarantees hold for a linear model, and a cascaded inner loop reduces each quadrotor's translational dynamics to a perturbed double integrator, so they carry over to the linearized quadrotor model and, as practical stability, to the full nonlinear one. In simulation on dense antipodal-swap benchmarks, the variable horizon reduces both per-step solver cost and total computation well below those of a long fixed horizon, and it maintains separation in every run, which a short fixed horizon of comparable per-step cost does not.

This paper studies lower-level-constrained bilevel optimization in a response-oracle setting, where lower-level model information is unavailable and the induced response mapping is locally Lipschitz but potentially nonsmooth. In this setting, the classical response Jacobian and reduced hypergradient may fail to exist. We propose Bilevel Zeroth-Order Learning (Bi-ZOL), a structure-guided zeroth-order method for finding stationary points of the nonsmooth reduced problem. Instead of estimating the gradient of a fully smoothed reduced hyperobjective, Bi-ZOL separates the bilevel chain-rule structure: it keeps the exact upper-level partial gradients at the queried response and uses zeroth-order sampling only to estimate the response Jacobian. This construction yields an approximate hypergradient that is more directly aligned with the Clarke chain-rule subdifferential. We show that the Bi-ZOL direction admits a partial-smoothing interpretation, quantify its pointwise structural bias, and prove finite-time convergence to a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-Bi-ZOL Frank–Wolfe stationary point. The bias is $O(\delta)$ for piecewise $C^{1,1}$ responses under local regularity and vanishes for piecewise affine responses on active-cell neighborhoods. Experiments on incentive-based tracking problems show that Bi-ZOL achieves smaller stationarity gaps and lower hyperobjective values than vanilla zeroth-order smoothing under comparable response-oracle budgets.

Cell-to-cell electrical and thermal variations produce nonuniform state of charge (SoC) and temperature distributions in lithium-ion battery packs. This paper proposes a Koopman-operator-based framework for simultaneous SoC and temperature balancing of series-connected cells. Cell-specific Koopman predictors identified using extended dynamic mode decomposition are assembled into neighboring-cell error dynamics that retain heterogeneity and thermal-disturbance effects. A Tikhonov-regularized feedforward controller provides numerically robust compensation without excessive current amplification, while constrained Koopman-based model predictive control (KMPC) regulates the residual errors through a convex quadratic program. Three-cell simulations validate the controller under two consecutive Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule cycles. KMPC achieves balancing performance comparable to nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). Relative to the uncontrolled case, KMPC reduces the RMSEs of the neighboring-cell SoC and core temperature differences by 66-81% and 57-76%, respectively, while reducing the computation time per optimization from 0.0259s for NMPC to 0.0028s for KMPC.

We take a new look at the relation between finite-horizon trajectory optimization and Schrödinger bridge sampling. Viewed as inference, KL-regularized trajectory optimization is solved by sampling from a Gibbs–Boltzmann distribution whose energy is the trajectory cost, and the adjoint Schrödinger bridge sampler (ASBS) is a simulation-free diffusion sampler designed for exactly such unnormalized targets. Hard equality path and terminal constraints, by contrast, confine the admissible decision variables to a measure-zero feasibility manifold, on which the target must be redefined intrinsically. In particular: $(a)$ we analyze two complementary parametrizations; a rollout parametrization, in which the dynamics are eliminated and only the remaining constraints shape the manifold, and a double-shooting parametrization, in which states and controls are sampled jointly and the dynamics themselves become part of the manifold; $(b)$ we establish regularity conditions under which both admissible sets are smooth embedded manifolds; $(c)$ under compactness and path-connectedness assumptions, we sample from the resulting intrinsic Gibbs measures via Riemannian ASBS, treating strict inequalities through exponential slack variables. Experiments, including contact-rich locomotion and manipulation, demonstrate the effectiveness of both regimes.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) controllers synthesized from standard temporal logics rely on rigid global clocks, rendering them vulnerable to asynchronous timing anomalies like clock snaps, jitter, and network delays. To overcome these vulnerabilities, we introduce a fundamentally timeless geometric control paradigm alongside a novel specification language: Weighted Event-Based Signal Temporal Logic (weSTL+). This new weSTL+ logic combines the event triggered nature of Event-STL with weighted user preferences of weighted-STL making it suitable for specification of practical autonomous CPS. Using a two-pass compiler, our framework translates weSTL+ formulae directly into C^1-differentiable time-invariant geometric surrogate constraints via finite-time level-set inversion. By mapping temporal windows directly into physical time independent geometric boundaries, this approach entirely eliminates explicit runtime clock monitoring. Our autonomous robotics case study demonstrates that the proposed geometric architecture guarantees enforcement of safety and liveness under severe macroscopic timing discontinuities, succeeding where traditional time-indexed controllers fail.

This paper develops a convex tube model predictive control formulation for constrained nonlinear systems. We consider dynamics described by a discrete-time state-space model with parametric and additive uncertainty that admits a difference-of-convex decomposition. Convex directional bounds of the nonlinear dynamics are combined with configuration-constrained polytopic tubes, whose predefined combinatorial structure yields an affine parameterization of their vertices. The resulting finite-dimensional sufficient conditions certify robust one-step tube propagation under parametric uncertainty and additive disturbances, while allowing the tube geometry and an associated vertex control law to be optimized jointly in a single convex program. An implicit terminal condition guarantees recursive feasibility and convergence of the predicted tube to a target robust control invariant set. Numerical results illustrate the closed-loop properties and the trade-off between geometric flexibility and computational complexity.

Grid-connected solar distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar inverters and monitoring platforms, have been deployed at unprecedented scale over the past few years, with global solar capacity more than doubling since 2022. To support monitoring and control, many of these systems are Internet-connected and configured by installers or end users, yet the real-world scale of their Internet exposure and the implications for power grid operation remain poorly understood. In this paper, we present an Internet-scale evaluation of exposed and vulnerable solar DER infrastructure, and assess the risk that compromised DERs can pose to energy grids. We develop a method for accurately identifying solar DERs from Internet scanning data, and discover a diverse population of over 66,000 Internet-exposed solar DERs. We detect that at least 10,000 of these DERs may have known CVEs, such as unauthenticated monitoring and control endpoints. To assess the risk that these vulnerable DERs pose to a power grid, we use an electric grid network for Oahu, Hawaii, established and used by the power system research community, and conduct a power system analysis. Our evaluation shows that by compromising exposed DERs, attackers can cause voltage and line flow violations across multiple locations in the Oahu network, resulting in a range of consequences from degraded power quality to damaged power system components to power outages. Ultimately, our work brings to light the emerging threat of grid-connected DERs, and provides directions for improving energy security.

Droop-free distributed control has emerged as a promising alternative to conventional linear droop control for coordinating inverter-based resources in AC microgrids. However, existing droop-free methods typically rely on quasi-steady state network models that neglect fast electromagnetic transients and assume a decoupled dependence of active and reactive power on frequency and voltage, respectively. In this paper, we propose a transient-aware droop-free distributed primary/secondary control framework for grid-forming (GFM) inverters. The control objective is to achieve proportional active and reactive power sharing, frequency regulation, and voltage regulation within prescribed bounds. The proposed approach incorporates dynamic models of network lines and loads into the control design, enabling accurate representation of transient behavior while capturing the coupled nature of power flow interactions. A gradient-based distributed control update is derived from an optimization formulation, in which voltage magnitude constraints are enforced through a projection operator. To validate the performance of the proposed control, real-time simulation studies are conducted on a four-inverter microgrid under load changes in both strong and weak grid conditions. The results demonstrate that the proposed method improves transient performance, particularly in weak grids, while preserving the same steady state operating conditions as existing QSS-based droop-free approaches.

We study online control of a scalar storage system with nonnegative adversarial resource arrivals and state-dependent action constraints. The adversarial, time-varying cost depends on both state and action. At each time, the controller selects a feasible action before the current resource arrival and cost are revealed. To handle the coupling between feasibility and online learning, we introduce Simplex Disturbance-Action Control (SDAC), whose policies have $H$ nonnegative parameters summing to at most one. Every fixed SDAC policy is feasible by construction. Our online SDAC controller updates these parameters using entropic online mirror descent while preserving feasibility along the time-varying trajectory. We prove a regret bound of $O\!\left(\sqrt{T\log(H+1)}\right)$ relative to the best fixed SDAC policy and a minimax lower bound showing that the dependence on $T$ is tight. We also introduce infinite-memory SDAC policies, which include every feasible fixed-fraction policy. SDAC policies approximate this class with an error that decreases geometrically with $H$. For a suitable choice $H=\Theta(\log T)$, the resulting regret against infinite-memory SDAC policies is $O\!\left(\sqrt{T\log\log T}\right)$. The framework applies to energy-harvesting batteries and other storage-constrained resource systems.

In electric delivery fleets, mid-shift charging is non-trivial: each vehicle must decide when, where and how much to charge to finish on time with battery above a safety floor. The choices are coupled: queues build where too many vehicles pick the same station. Prior work resolves this coupling with central dispatching, precomputed schedules or reservations, machinery that charging infrastructure rarely supports. Instead, we use a family of learning agents under purely local control: every vehicle runs the same policy, deciding alone from its time budgets and broadcast station occupancies, leading to emergent coordination without central control or messaging. We validate this paradigm in simulation on real OpenStreetMap networks of twenty cities, each with a frozen scenario calibrated by an omniscient Oracle (99.5% of shifts completed on time), whereas a naive greedy rule (nearest station on low battery) completes just 73%. Agents trained with neuroevolution (NEAT) and policy gradients (PPO) on four cities and deployed zero-shot across all twenty, sixteen never seen in training, complete 96.8% and 98.6% of shifts, with the policy-gradient controllers proving more robust when demand or vehicle characteristics drift beyond the trained regime. In contrast, tuned threshold heuristics that read vehicle urgency alone fall short in contended cities (~80%). Through training, these learning agents rediscover partial charging and short opportunistic sessions, and route around busy stations, cutting per-session queue waits from about 45 minutes to under 2. In summary, this coordination paradigm balances local urgency against public occupancy, reaching near-Oracle performance at minimal implementation cost.

Data-driven power-system models are typically developed for specific grids and computational tasks, but their performance can deteriorate markedly or even fail when network structures or analytical objectives change. This paper develops a unified grid representation that separates physical-grid description from downstream computation. A self-supervised encoder represents each grid as a variable number of fixed-dimensional node, branch and global vectors under a common latent description. Although pretrained only on systems with at most 270 buses, the frozen encoder transfers without adaptation to a 70,000-bus network, more than 250 times larger in bus count, while preserving 0.7919 bus-correspondence accuracy. The same representation supports four independently trained downstream tasks: power-flow calculation, reactive-power adjustment, operating-condition generation and transient-stability assessment. On the previously unseen 70,000-bus grid, power-flow calculation achieves mean errors of 0.108$^{\circ}$ in phase angle and 3.8$\times$10\textsuperscript{-6} p.u. in voltage magnitude. Reactive-power adjustment achieved a 75% PSASP-verified correction rate on the previously unseen 70,000-bus grid, while operating-condition generation delivered at least one PSASP-verified feasible state for 82.2% of requests on previously unseen 400–1,000-bus grid families. For transient-stability assessment, the frozen encoder achieves accuracy within 0.8 percentage points of full encoder adaptation under matched training conditions. These results demonstrate that a unified power-grid representation can be learned once and reused unchanged across structurally different power systems and heterogeneous computational tasks.