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Research directions in applied mechanics and control

The main subject of research at the department of mechanics and control (DAMC) is controlled mechanical systems. This branch of mechanics differs from other mechanical specialities by several specific features:

1. Mechanics of controlled systems is one of the youngest branches of mechanics. Scientific and technological progress continuously creates new directions in engineering, which demand theoretical consideration and proof from the point of view of dynamics of controlled motion. Such new directions in the XXI century are aviation, automobile technology, gyroscopy, aerospace, robotics, biomechanics and others. DAMC does research in all of these directions.
2. Controlled mechanical systems gain life and it's equations become self-sufficient only after a willful act of a researcher - choosing the control law. Thus analysis of controlled systems is tightly connected with their construction.
3. Modern methods of control assume that the algorithms of estimation and control use some mathematical model of the controlled object, which can be thought of as a virtual computer image of the object. Thus a controlled mechanical system consists of two dynamical subsystems: the "hardware", i.e. the controlled mechanical object itself and informational model, implemented inside the computer. The computer serves not only as a calculator, but as a part of an informational-mechanical system.

Presently research at DAMC is done in the following directions:

• Mathematical modeling
• Estimation theory and navigation
• Applied motion control
• Controllability, stabilability, stability
• Maximal deviation problem, absolute and robust stability
• Mechatronic systems and robotics
• Dynamic imitation of controlled motion