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Welcome to the Intelligent Control and Estimation of Things Lab

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The current research focus of the Intelligent Control and Estimation of Things (ICE-T) Lab is on the control, estimation, identification and analysis of autonomous, robotic and cyber-physical systems (CPS) under real-world uncertainties. CPS are broadly characterized as networked computational elements that control physical components; they form the basis of our future smart systems, ranging from traffic flow management to personalized health care to electric power generation and distribution. A central theme of our research is harnessing the rich dynamical behavior of mixed continuous and discrete (i.e., hybrid) system dynamics to describe and analyze the complex behaviors and interactions of such systems, as well as the changes in their environment, intentional or otherwise. Our research contributes foundational understanding of the control and estimation of these smart systems that opens up new opportunities for creating and improving their safety, functionality and efficiency, with a beneficial impact on our society and economy.

Recent News and Announcements

  • October 2023: Presented a virtual talk at the International Online Seminar on Interval Methods in Control Engineering on “Robust Control Barrier Functions with Set-Membership Estimation and Learning” [Youtube Video] [Slides]
  • August 2023: Received the George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles for the paper entitled “A Survey of Motion Planning and Control Techniques for Self-Driving Urban Vehicles.”
  • July 2023: Presented an invited talk on “Robust Control Barrier Functions for Uncertain Systems with Set-Membership Parameter Estimation and Learning” at the 2023 Workshop on Uncertain Dynamical Systems (WUDS) in Kyoto, Japan.
  • April 2023: Zeyuan and Hassaan successfully defended their PhD theses. Congratulations, Dr. Zeyuan Jin and Dr. Syed Hassaan!
  • November 2022: Ruochen successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Ruochen Niu!
  • September 2022: Awarded the 2023 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (ONR YIP) Award  for a research project entitled “Distributed Coordination of Autonomous Swarms with Limited or Absent Communication and Intermittent Data.”
    News article (September 2022): https://coe.northeastern.edu/news/yong-receives-onr-yip-for-the-coordination-of-autonomous-swarms/
  • August 2022: Big news! I have moved to Northeastern University! I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering.
  • November 2021: Congratulations to our former PhD student, Mohammad Khajenejad, who recently graduated and won the prestigious 2021 Dean’s Dissertation Award!
  • September 2021: Started a new  National Institute of Health of Arthritis & Musculoskeletal & Skin Diseases (R01) project entitled “Smart User-Effective Data-Enabled (SUEDE) Shoe for Ankle Injury Prevention” (with Drs. Hyunglae Lee (ASU), Pavan Turaga (ASU) and Matthew Buman (ASU))
  • May 2021: Started a new NASA Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project with Geisel Software, Inc. based in Worchester, MA for a research project entitled “Communicationless Coordination via Intent Estimation and Intent-Expressive Motion Planning in Multiagent Exploration.”
    News articles (April 2021): https://geisel.software/content/geisel-software-and-asu-awarded-nasa-sttr-contract-communicationless-coordination-robotic and https://fullcircle.asu.edu/external/nasa-awards-geisel-software-and-arizona-state-university-swarm-robotics-contract/
  • October 2020: Awarded the 2020 NASA Early Career Faculty Award by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for a research project entitled “Coordinated Multi-robot-chain for Terrain Estimation and Exploration.”
    News article (December 2020):  https://fullcircle.engineering.asu.edu/faculty/yong-enhancing-the-real-world-safety-and-security-of-autonomous-systems/
  • April 2020: Awarded the 2020 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (NSF CAREER) Award by the NSF Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program for a research project entitled “CAREER: Towards Non-Conservative Learning-Aided Robustness for Cyber-Physical Safety and Security.” News article (May 2020): https://fullcircle.engineering.asu.edu/faculty/yong-enhancing-the-real-world-safety-and-security-of-autonomous-systems/
  • January 2020: Commencing two research projects sponsored by NSF National Robotics Initiative (NRI) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) programs with projects entitled “User-Adaptive and Safe Control of a Wearable Upper-Extremity Exoskeleton Robot” (with Dr. Hyunglae Lee (ASU)) and “Data-Driven Modeling and Preview-Based Control for Cyber-Physical System Safety” (with Drs. Necmiye Ozay (University of Michigan), Dimitra Panagou (University of Michigan) and Samet Oymak (University of California, Riverside)), respectively.
  • January 2020: Two conference papers will appear at ACC and ECC 2020 on the subjects of “Data-Driven Model Invalidation for Unknown Lipschitz Continuous Systems via Abstraction” and “Active Model Discrimination using Partition-Based Output Feedback Input Design,” respectively.
  • January 2020: A paper on “Finite Horizon Constrained Control and Bounded-error Estimation in the Presence of Missing Data” (Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems) is now available online.
  • July 2019: Two conference papers will appear at CDC 2020 in Nice, France on the subjects of  “Simultaneous Mode, Input and State Set-Valued Observers with Applications to Resilient Estimation against Sparse Attacks” and “Optimization-Based Approaches for Affine Abstraction and Model Discrimination of Uncertain Nonlinear Systems.”
  • May 2019: A conference paper will appear at CCTA 2019 in Hong Kong on the subject of  “Intention-Aware Supervisory Control with Driving Safety Applications.”
  • February 2019: Two conference papers will appear at ECC 2019 in Naples, Italy.
  • January 2019: Five conference papers will appear at ACC 2019 in Philadelphia, PA.
  • October 2018: A paper on “Set-point regulation of linear continuous-time systems using neuromorphic vision sensors” (Transactions on Automatic Control) is now available online.
  • July 2018: Won 2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award for the topic area of “Swarm Intent Understanding.”
    News article (September 2018): https://fullcircle.asu.edu/faculty/understanding-autonomous-swarms/
  • July 2018: One conference paper will appear at CDC 2018 in Miami, FL on the subject mesh-based affine abstraction.
  • July 2018: Two conference papers appeared at ADHS 2018 in Oxford, UK on the subjects of equalized recovery with missing data and affine abstraction.
  • June 2018: A paper on “Switching and data injection attacks on stochastic cyber-physical systems: Modeling, resilient estimation and attack mitigation” (ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems) is now available online.
  • April 2018: Honored by a Top 5% Teaching Award in Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU.
  • January 2018: Two conference papers will appear at ACC 2017 in Milwaukee, WI on the subjects of set-valued attack-resilient estimation and weak adaptive submodularity.
  • December 2017: A conference paper on active model discrimination will appear at ICCPS 2018 in Porto, Portugal.
  • July 2017: Two papers will be presented at CDC 2017 in Melbourne, Australia.
  • May 2017: Presented a conference paper on “Weak Adaptive Submodularity and Group-Based Active Diagnosis with Applications to State Estimation with Persistent Sensor Faults” at ACC 2017.
  • May 2017: A paper on “Simultaneous Input and State Estimation for Linear Time-Varying Continuous-Time Stochastic Systems” (Transactions on Automatic Control) is now available online.
  • May 2017: A paper on “Supermodular Batch State Estimation in Optimal Sensor Scheduling” has been accepted for publication in IEEE Control Systems Letters.
  • February 2017: A conference paper on active model discrimination will appear at IFAC World Congress 2017 in Toulouse, France.
  • January 2017: Two conference papers will appear at ACC 2017 in Seattle, WA on the subjects of weak adaptive submodularity and event-based control.
  • January 2017: Joined Arizona State University as an assistant professor and will be teaching MAE 318: System Dynamics and Control.
  • November 2016: Submitted a conference paper to IFAC World Congress 2017.
  • September 2016: Submitted conference papers to ACC 2017.
  • July 2016: Two conference papers will appear at CDC 2016 in Las Vegas, NV.
  • July 2016: Joined University of Michigan as  a postdoctoral fellow.
  • July 2016: Presented a conference paper on “Robust and Resilient Estimation of CPS under Adversarial Attack” at ACC 2016. Chaired the “Security of Cyber-Physical Systems I” session.
  • March 2016: Submitted conference papers to CDC 2016.
  • March 2016: The paper “A Survey of Motion Planning and Control Techniques for Self-Driving Urban Vehicles” appeared in the first issue of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles.
  • January 2016: A conference paper on “Robust and Resilient Estimation of CPS under Adversarial Attack” will appear at ACC 2016.
  • December 2015: Presented three conference papers at CDC 2015 in Osaka, Japan.
  • November 2015: An Automatica journal article entitled “A unified filter for simultaneous input and state estimation for linear discrete-time stochastic systems” is now online.
  • September 2015: Gave a talk on “Estimation of hidden mode hybrid systems with applications to intention-aware vehicles and resilient state estimation” at UC Berkeley, CA.
  • September 2015: Submitted a conference paper to ACC 2016.
  • July 2015: Three conference papers including one on resilient state estimation will appear at CDC 2015 in Osaka, Japan.
  • July 2015: Presented two conference papers at ACC 2015 in Chicago, IL.
  • May 2015: Gave a talk at GRASP Special Seminar on “Estimation of hidden mode hybrid systems with applications to autonomous systems and resilient estimation” at University of Pennsylvania, PA.
  • March 2015: A number of conference papers were submitted to CDC 2015.
  • January 2015: Three conference papers on continuous-time state and input filtering, flat output characterization, test and tracking control, as well as asymptotic reachable subspace will appear at ACC 2015.
  • January 2015: Submitted a paper on simultaneous input and state filtering for linear time-varying continuous-time systems to Transactions on Automatic Control.
  • December 2014: Presented three conference papers at CDC 2014 in Los Angeles, CA.
  • September 2014: Several conference papers were submitted to ACC 2015.
  • July 2014: Three conference papers on state and input smoothing, state and input filtering for switched linear systems and adaptive tracking control with input amplitude and rate constraints will appear at CDC 2014.
  • April 2014: Presenting a poster at CPSWeek 2014, Berlin, Germany.
  • March 2014: Best Poster Award at Early Career Professionals’ Workshop on Exploring New Frontiers in Cyber-Physical Systems (ECP), Washington, D.C. (among 50 selected posters) — Received full NSF-funded student travel support to attend CPSWeek 2014 in Berlin!
  • July 2013: Two conference papers on stochastically parametric differential games and state and input filtering for discrete-time systems will appear at IROS 2013 and at CDC 2013, respectively.
  • January 2013: A conference paper on hidden mode tracking control will appear at ACC 2013.