Amit K. Sanyal

Associate Professor

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

216 Link Hall

aksanyal@syr.edu

315.443.0466

Degrees:

  • Ph.D. (Aerospace Engineering, U of Michigan)
  • MS (Mathematics, U of Michigan)
  • MS (Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M)
  • B. Tech. (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur)

Lab/Center Affiliation:

  • Syracuse Center of Excellence
  • Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE)

Research Interests:

  • Nonlinear dynamics
  • Geometric control
  • Nonlinear estimation
  • Geometric mechanics
  • Aerospace control
  • Mobile robots

Current Research:

My primary research interests are in dynamics modeling, control and estimation of mobile robots, spacecraft and unmanned vehicles modeled as rigid body and multi-body systems. The framework of this research is based on geometric mechanics and geometric control. These methods provide the substantial practical advantage of Lyapunov stability in the control and estimation schemes obtained. A secondary practical advantage is that such schemes lead to energy-efficient and robust control that is implementable with current technology. Geometric mechanics is the study of the mechanics of systems that evolve on state spaces that may not be vector spaces. The overall (translational and attitude) motion of aerospace vehicles cannot be described globally on a vector space, as their states evolve on a differentiable manifold that cannot be continuously deformed to a vector space. For spacecraft, maneuverable aerial vehicles and several robotic systems, the large ranges of rotational motion necessitate a global analysis of the state space to tackle dynamics, state estimation and control problems of interest. The vast majority of current schemes for control and state estimation of such systems are either applicable to local motion due to singularities, or they are unstable in the sense of Lyapunov, or they require discontinuous or hybrid control schemes that cannot be implemented by attitude actuators that can only provide continuous inputs. Technical challenges that can be overcome with the nonlinear estimation and control techniques that I have developed include robustness to uncertainties in the dynamics; coupled control, power and communication constraints; actuator constraints; and control and estimation of system states and uncertain inputs over large ranges of possible motions.

Courses Taught:

Courses taught at NMSU from fall 2013 till spring 2015 are:

  • AE 362 (Orbital Mechanics)
  • ME 452 (Control System Design)
  • AE 561/ME 405 (Spacecraft Dynamics and Control)
  • AE/ME 527 (Control of Mechanical Systems)
  • AE/ME 529 (Nonlinear and Optimal Control)
  • ME 580 (Numerical Analysis II)

Courses taught at Syracuse University from fall 2015 are:

  • AEE 577 (Introduction to Space Flight)
  • MEE 725 (Advanced Engineering Dynamics)
  • MAE 312 (Engineering Analysis)
  • MAE 675 (Methods of Analysis)
  • MAE 700 (Advanced Nonlinear Control)
  • MAE 600/700 (Spacecraft Dynamics and Control)

Honors:

  • 2001 Distinguished Graduate Student Masters Research Award, Texas A & M University.
  • 2002 College of Engineering Fellowship, University of Michigan.
  • 2003 Engineering Academic Scholar Certificate, College of Engineering, University of Michigan.
  • 2012 Summer Faculty Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory.
  • 2013 AIAA Senior Member.
  • 2015 IEEE Senior Member.

Selected Publications:

R. Hamrah, R. Warier, and A. K. Sanyal, “Finite-time stable estimator for attitude motion in the presence of bias in angular velocity measurements,” to appear in Automatica, in press, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.automatica.2021.109815.

A. K. Sanyal, “Data-Driven  Discrete-time  Control  with  H¨older-Continuous  Real-time  Learning,” to appear in International Journal of Control, 2021, doi: 10.1080/00207179.2021.1901993; arXiv version available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05288.

R. Hamrah and  A. K. Sanyal,  “Finite-time  Stable  Tracking  Control  for  an  Underactuated  System  in SE(3) in Discrete Time,” International Journal of Control, published online: 11/09/2020, doi: 10.1080/00207179.2020.1841299.

X. Li, A. K. Sanyal, R. R. Warier, and D. Qiao, “Landing of hopping rovers on Irregularly-shaped small bodies using attitude control,” Advances in Space Research, vol. 65(11), pp. 2674-2691, 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2020.02.029.

R. R. Warier, A. K. Sanyal, and S. P. Viswanathan, “Finite Time Stable Attitude Estimation of Rigid Bodies With Unknown Dynamics,” Asian Journal of Control, vol. 21(4), pp. 1522-1530, 2019, doi: 10.1002/asjc.2089.

X. Li, R. R. Warier, A. K. Sanyal, and D. Qiao, “Trajectory Tracking Near Small Bodies Using Only Attitude Control and Orbit-Attitude Coupling,” AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, published online, doi: 10.2514/1.G003653. JGCD-G003653_online

S. P. Viswanathan and A. K. Sanyal, “Adaptive Singularity-free Control Moment Gyroscopes,” AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, 2018, doi: 10.2514/1.G003545. ASCMG-JGCD-final

S. P. Viswanathan, A. K. Sanyal and E. Samiei, “Integrated Guidance and Feedback Control of Underactuated Robotics System in SE(3),” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 89, pp. 251-263, 2018, doi: 10.1007/s10846-017-0547-0.JIRS-FinalPub-Print

A. Siravuru, S. P. Viswanathan, K. Sreenath and A. K. Sanyal, “The Reaction Mass Biped: Geometric Mechanics and Control,” Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 89, pp. 155-173, 2018.JIRS-RMB