{"title":"Controller Design for Bilinear Neural Feedback Loops","authors":"Dhruv Shah;Jorge Cortés","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584089","url":null,"abstract":"This letter considers a class of bilinear systems with a neural network in the loop. These arise naturally when employing machine learning techniques to approximate general, non-affine in the input, control systems. We propose a controller design framework that combines linear fractional representations and tools from linear parameter varying control to guarantee local exponential stability of a desired equilibrium. The controller is obtained from the solution of linear matrix inequalities, which can be solved offline, making the approach suitable for online applications. The proposed methodology offers tools for stability and robustness analysis of deep neural networks interconnected with dynamical systems.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1712-1717"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144663717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dissatisfaction Dynamics in Directed Bipartite Networks of Captive User Communities","authors":"Alain Y. Kibangou;Retsepile C. Kalaoane","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584301","url":null,"abstract":"Socio-technical systems providing essential services, like water, energy, and transportation, often create captive user segments due to limited alternatives. This can lead to user dissatisfaction and complex social dynamics. Building on a recent dynamic model, this letter extends the analysis of captive user dissatisfaction to networks of interconnected communities, using a directed bipartite leader–follower structure. We investigate the steady-state properties of the model and analyze how leader communities can mitigate or amplify dissatisfaction among their followers. A key insight is that consensus in dissatisfaction levels does not stem from network topology but from the alignment of a Dissatisfaction Index, a new metric introduced in this letter that reflects each community’s perception of service quality.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1766-1771"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144662027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning Safe Data-Driven Control Barrier Functions for Unknown Continuous Systems","authors":"Feiya Zhu;Tarun Pati;Sze Zheng Yong","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584079","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a semi-parametric approach for learning safe data-driven control barrier functions (SDD-CBFs) for unknown continuous systems from noisy data. By leveraging optimization theory, interval and mixed-monotone bounding, and probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, we learn at design time both parametric control barrier functions (CBFs) and their non-parametric CBF conditions from noisy data with a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) to ensure robust safety despite generalization errors with a high probability. Moreover, we propose an online safety filter for minimally modifying any nominal controller for safety that reduces to computationally efficient quadratic programming.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1736-1741"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144663711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Antonios Georgantas;Stelios Timotheou;Christos G. Panayiotou
{"title":"A Successive Convexification-Based Approach for Efficient School Scheduling in Multi-Region Urban Networks","authors":"Antonios Georgantas;Stelios Timotheou;Christos G. Panayiotou","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3584303","url":null,"abstract":"In urban traffic networks, morning commuters exhibit diverse travel patterns, with some needing to make intermediate stops, such as dropping off children at school, before reaching their destination. When schools have synchronized start times, this induces high peak demand, exacerbating congestion. To address this challenge, we consider the problem of regulating the start times of schools in a multi-region urban network characterized by well-defined Macroscopic Fundamental Diagrams in different regions. We formulate the problem as a bi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear program aiming to jointly minimize (i) the total time spent by all vehicles, and (ii) the overall deviation from current school start times. The problem is challenging due to its large-scale and combinatorial nature, as well as the nonconvexity present in the traffic dynamics across multiple interconnected urban regions. To address these challenges, we introduce a successive convexification algorithm that iteratively tightens traffic density bounds and convexifies constraints, enabling the acquisition of feasible and efficient solutions concerning the optimization problem. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our approach yields near-optimal results, significantly mitigating congestion and improving overall traffic efficiency.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1550-1555"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144634679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Synchronization of Multi-Agent Hybrid Systems With Synchronous State-Dependent Jumps","authors":"Alexandre Cellier-Devaux;Luca Zaccarian;Daniele Astolfi;Vincent Andrieu","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583739","url":null,"abstract":"In this letter, we investigate the problem of synchronization of multi-agent systems described by hybrid non-linear input affine dynamics. We consider networks described by undirected connected graphs without leader. We present a set of sufficient conditions based on an LMI approach in order to design a state-feedback distributed control law. Then, by exploiting the properties of the graph incidence matrix we provide an optimization of the tuning parameters. The incidence matrix properties also allow us to construct a Lyapunov function to establish synchronization of the hybrid network.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1586-1591"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144634710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Practical Synchronization for Switched Multi-Agent Systems Under Nonvanishing Impulses","authors":"Yuchao Xiong;Mengqi Xue;Kaile Chen;Yue Song","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583746","url":null,"abstract":"The practical synchronization problem for switched multi-agent systems (MASs) under nonvanishing impulses is studied, where switchings both take place in network topology and agent self-dynamics. In order to deal with the problem of asynchrony between the switching of network topologies and the switching of agent self-dynamics as well as always disconnected network topologies, a dynamic controller embedded with a virtual reference system is proposed. In consideration of nonvanishing impulses for switched MASs, a sufficient piecewise average dwell time (ADT) condition for global uniform practical stability is established which ensures the ultimate bounded synchronization. Finally, a simulation example is provided to illustrate the theoretical results.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1484-1489"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Event-Triggered Synergistic Controllers With Dwell-Time Transmission","authors":"Xuanzhi Zhu;Pedro Casau;Carlos Silvestre","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583993","url":null,"abstract":"We propose novel event-triggered synergistic controllers for nonlinear continuous-time plants by incorporating event-triggered control into stabilizing synergistic controllers. We highlight that a naive application of common event-triggering conditions may not ensure dwell-time transmission due to the joint jumping dynamics of the closed-loop system. Under mild conditions, we develop a suite of event-triggered synergistic controllers that guarantee both dwell-time transmission and global asymptotic stability. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our controller applied to the problem of rigid body attitude stabilization.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1796-1801"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144671119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Distributed Observer Accommodating a Broad Range of Intermittent Communication Scenarios","authors":"Sunghyun Koo;Jin Gyu Lee;Hyungbo Shim","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583672","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a distributed observer that utilizes intermittent communication and accommodates a broad range of scenarios, including asynchronous operation, unidirectional communication, packet loss, and communication delays. An analysis over jointly connected switching topology supports this and provides a condition for exponential convergence of the estimation error. This condition can be used to determine a communication rate. The analysis is valid when the unobservable subspace of each agent admits an invariant orthogonal complement. This is a property that is always achievable via a coordinate transformation when the system matrix is diagonalizable over the complex field.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1682-1687"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144634680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constant-Sum High-Order Barrier Functions for Safety Between Parallel Boundaries","authors":"Kwang Hak Kim;Mamadou Diagne;Miroslav Krstić","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583748","url":null,"abstract":"This letter takes a step towards addressing the difficulty of constructing Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) for parallel safety boundaries. A single CBF for both boundaries has been reported to be difficult to validate for safety, and we identify why this challenge is inherent. To overcome this, the proposed method constructs separate CBFs for each boundary. We begin by presenting results for the relative degree one case and then extend these to higher relative degrees using the CBF backstepping technique, establishing conditions that guarantee safety. Finally, we showcase our method by applying it to a unicycle system, deriving a simple, verifiable condition to validate the target CBFs for direct implementation of our results.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1447-1452"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Bi-Level Optimization Method for Redundant Dual-Arm Minimum Time Problems","authors":"Jonathan Fried;Santiago Paternain","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3583741","url":null,"abstract":"In this letter, we present a method for minimizing the time required for a redundant dual-arm robot to follow a desired relative Cartesian path at constant path speed by optimizing its joint trajectories, subject to position, velocity, and acceleration limits. The problem is reformulated as a bi-level optimization whose lower level is a convex, closed-form subproblem that maximizes path speed for a fixed trajectory, while the upper level updates the trajectory using a single-chain kinematic formulation and the subgradient of the lower-level value. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"9 ","pages":"1321-1326"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}