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Many techniques originally developed in the context of deterministic control theory have been recently applied to the quest for optimal protocols in stochastic processes. Given a system subject to environmental fluctuations, one may ask…
We propose an agent-based model of active flexible rods. Inspired by cytoskeletal flows, we introduce activity by an internal flow that contributes to the dissipative forces. The active force between our agents is central and reciprocal,…
Motor control is a fundamental process that underlies all voluntary behavioral responses. Several different theories based on different principles (task dynamics, equilibrium-point theory, passive-motion paradigm, active inference, optimal…
We investigate optimal control of dynamical systems which are affine, i.e., linear in control, but nonlinear in state. The control task is to enforce the system state to follow a prescribed desired trajectory as closely as possible, a task…
We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematic film is topologically constraint. These topological constraints allow to control the non-equilibrium dynamics of the active system. We consider ellipsoidal shapes for…
The term active nematics designates systems in which apolar elongated particles spend energy to move randomly along their axis and interact by inelastic collisions in the presence of noise. Starting from a simple Vicsek-style model for…
The emergence of long-range spatiotemporal order from intrinsic chaos is a central challenge in far-from-equilibrium physics. In active fluids, such as cytoskeletal networks driving cellular motion, self-generated flows typically produce…
Active systems, from bacterial suspensions to cellular monolayers, are continuously driven out of equilibrium by local injection of energy from their constituent elements and exhibit turbulent-like and chaotic patterns. Here we demonstrate…
A nematic liquid crystal confined to the surface of a sphere exhibits topological defects of total charge $+2$ due to the topological constraint. In equilibrium, the nematic field forms four $+1/2$ defects, located at the corners of a…
In this paper we introduce the optimal control of a kinetic model describing agents who migrate on a graph and interact within its nodes exchanging a physical quantity. As a prototype model, we consider the spread of an infectious disease…
In this paper, we consider the stochastic optimal control problem for the interacting particle system. We obtain the stochastic maximum principle of the optimal control system by introducing a generalized backward stochastic differential…
Understanding active matter has led to new perspectives on biophysics and non-equilibrium dynamics. However, the development of numerical tools for simulating active fluids capable of incorporating non-trivial boundaries or inclusions has…
Optimal processes in stochastic thermodynamics are a frontier for understanding the control and design of non-equilibrium systems, with broad practical applications in biology, chemistry, and nanoscale/mesoscale systems. Optimal mass…
The positive-real and bounded-real lemmas solve two important linear-quadratic optimal control problems for passive and non-expansive systems, respectively. The lemmas assume controllability, yet a passive or non-expansive system can be…
State-of-the-art approaches to optimal control use smooth approximations of value and policy functions and gradient-based algorithms for improving approximator parameters. Unfortunately, we show that value and policy functions that arise in…
In this work, we study an optimal control problem for a multi-agent system modeled by an undirected formation graph with nodes describing the kinematics of each agent, given by a left-invariant control system on a Lie group. The agents…
We introduce optimal energy shaping as an enhancement of classical passivity-based control methods. A promising feature of passivity theory, alongside stability, has traditionally been claimed to be intuitive performance tuning along the…
We consider the optimal control of quantum systems interacting non-linearly with an electromagnetic field. We propose new monotonically convergent algorithms to solve the optimal equations. The monotonic behavior of the algorithm is ensured…
Quantum optimal control theory is a powerful tool for engineering quantum systems subject to external fields such as the ones created by intense lasers. The formulation relies on a suitable definition for a target functional, that…
We investigate similarities in the micro-structural dynamics between externally driven and actively driven nematics. Walls, lines of strong deformations in the director field, and topological defects are characteristic features of an active…