Sheng Cheng 程 晟

Postdoctoral Research Associate Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Email: chengs [@] illinois [DOT] edu GitHub: Sheng-Cheng

About me

Hello! Thank you for visiting my website. I'm a postdoc at UIUC working with Prof. Naira Hovakimyan. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, under the supervision of Prof. Derek A. Paley in 2021. My Curriculum Vitae can be found here.

Recent news

Research

Research Interests

Robotics; Adaptive control; Optimization; PDE control and estimation; Cooperative control;

Publications

1. S. Cheng, L. Song, M. Kim, S. Wang, N. Hovakimyan, “DiffTune+: Hyperparameter-Free Auto-Tuning using Auto-Differentiation” submitted.

2. Q. Chen, S. Cheng, N. Hovakimyan, “ Simultaneous Spatial and Temporal Assignment for Fast UAV Trajectory Optimization using Bilevel Optimization,” submitted. preprint

3. S. Cheng, M. Kim, L. Song, Z. Wu, S. Wang, N. Hovakimyan, “DiffTune: Auto-Tuning through Auto-Differentiation,” submitted. preprint | video

4. H. Lee, S. Cheng, Z. Wu, N. Hovakimyan, “Geometric Tracking Control of Omnidirectional Multirotors in the Presence of Rotor Dynamics,” submitted. preprint | video

5. Z. Wu, S.Cheng, K. A. Ackerman, A. Gahlawat, A. Lakshmanan, P. Zhao, N. Hovakimyan, “L1 Adaptive Augmentation for Geometric Tracking Control of Quadrotors,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2022, pp. 1329–1336. code | video

6. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Optimal guidance and estimation of a 2D diffusion-advection process by a team of mobile sensors,” Automatica, vol. 137, p. 110112, 2022.

7. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Cooperative estimation and control of a diffusion based spatiotemporal process using mobile sensors and actuators,” submitted.

8. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Optimal control of a 2D diffusion-advection process with a team of mobile actuators under jointly optimal guidance,” Automatica, vol. 133, p. 109866, 2021.

9. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Optimal guidance of a team of mobile actuators for controlling a 1D diffusion process with unknown initial conditions,” in Proceedings of the 2021 American Control Conference, pp. 1493-1498, 2021.

10. S. Cheng and N. C. Martins, “An Optimality Gap Test for a Semidefinite Relaxation of a Quadratic Program with Two Quadratic Constraints,” SIAM Journal on Optimization, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 866-886, March 2021. | code

11. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Optimal guidance and estimation of a 1D diffusion process by a team of mobile sensors,” in Proceedings of the 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 1222-1228, 2020. | slides | video

12. S. Cheng and D. A. Paley, “Optimal control of a 1D diffusion process with a team of mobile actuators under jointly optimal guidance,” in Proceedings of the 2020 American Control Conference, pp. 3449-3454, 2020. | slides | video

13. A. Wolek, S. Cheng, D. Goswami, and D. A. Paley, “Cooperative mapping and target search over an unknown occupancy graph using mutual information,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1071-1078, April 2020.

14. S. Cheng and N. C. Martins, “Reaching a target in a time-costly area using a two-stage optimal control method,” in Proceedings of the 2019 American Control Conference, pp. 4903-4910, 2019. | slides

15. S. Cheng, “Reaching a target within a GPS-denied or costly area: a two-stage optimal control approach,” M.S. Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2018.

Current Project

TBD
Duration: September 2021 - present
Advisor: Prof. Naira Hovakimyan
Project description: will be updated soon.

Past Projects

Mobile estimation and control of a dynamical spatiotemporal process Duration: January 2019–July 2021 Advisor: Dr. Derek Paley Project description: The long-term goal of this project is to enable multiple autonomous agents to adaptively estimate and possibly control a dynamical spatiotemporal process (e.g., harmful algal blooms or forest fires). The specific research objective is to apply tools from the theory of infinite-dimensional systems, nonlinear estimation, optimal experiment design, inverse problems, network science, uncertainty quantification, and multi-vehicle control to solve the problem of (i) estimation and control of a dynamical spatiotemporal process and (ii) task allocation for a heterogeneous group of resource-constrained agents.

Cooperative mapping, searching, and tracking in an uncertain urban environment Duration: September 2018–July 2019 Advisor: Dr. Derek Paley Project description: In this project, we propose a cooperative mapping and search algorithm for detecting a single moving target in an urban environment that is initially unknown to a team of autonomous quadrotors equipped with noisy sensors with a limited field of view. This algorithm is being tested with real quadrotors and a simulated target at the Fearless Flight Facility (F3) of the University of Maryland. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Artur Wolek and Heron Systems Inc. Video

Reaching a target within a GPS-denied or costly area: a two-stage optimal control approach Duration: July 2016–August 2018 Advisor: Dr. Nuno Martins Project description: In this project, we study a new class of problem where a mobile agent is controlled to reach a target that is either costly or GPS denied. We formulate a two-stage optimal control problem and propose solution methods. For the case of GPS denied area, we validate the controller in a quadrotor experiment (demo). This work was supported by the Air Force Center of Excellence: Nature Inspired Flight Technologies and Ideas (NIFTI). Poster

Honors and Awards

• Graduate School Summer Fellowship, University of Maryland (2021)

• Student Travel Award, ACC, CDC, SIAM DS

• Future Faculty Fellow, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland (2018)

• George Corcoran Award, awarded by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland (2016)

• Teaching Assistant Training and Development (TATD) Fellow, awarded by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland (2015-2016)

• International Teaching Fellow (ITF), awarded by the Teaching & Learning Transformation Center, University of Maryland (2015-2016)

• Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award, awarded by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland (2015)

• Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award, thesis title: “Design of the GPS/MEMS IMU Combined Navigation System”, awarded by the Department of Control Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (2014)

• Research Funding and Travel, awarded by Mitcas Globalink Internship Program, Canada (2013)

Teaching and Mentoring

• ENAE646         Advanced Dynamics of Aerospace Systems (Spring 2021, co-teaching with Dr. Derek Paley)

• ENEE303         Analog and Digital Electronics (Fall 2015)

• ENEE307         Electronic Circuits Design Laboratory (Fall 2014 and Spring 2015)

• ENEE324(H)   Engineering Probability (Spring 2016)

• TATD Fellow   Workshops in Fall 2015 and Spring 2016

• ITF Mentor      Fall 2015 and Spring 2016

Service

• Journal Reviewer: Automatica, Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Control Systems Letters

• Conference Reviewer: CoRL, ICRA CDC, ACC, and DARS-SWARM

• Member: IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Intelligent Control

Address

MEL 2009
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801

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