Joao Hespanha

Professor

Contacts

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

tel: (805) 893-7042
fax: (805) 893-3262
hespanha@ece.ucsb.edu

Personal web site

Network Control Systems

This diagram shows the general architecture of an NCS. Encoder blocks map measurements into streams of “symbols” that can be transmitted across the network. Encoders serve two purposes: they decide when to sample a continuous-time signal for transmission, and what to send through the network. Conversely, decoder blocks perform the task of mapping the streams of symbols received from the network into continuous actuation signals. One could also include in the diagram encoding/decoding blocks to mediate the controllers’ access to the network. We do not explicitly represent these blocks because the boundaries between a digital controller and encoder/decoder blocks are often blurry.

Research Description

His current research interests include hybrid and switched systems; the modeling and control of communication networks; distributed control over communication networks (also known as networked control systems); the use of vision in feedback control; and stochastic modeling in biology.

Biography

João P. Hespanha was born in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1968. He received the Licenciatura in electrical and computer engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal in 1991 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and applied science from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 1998. From 1999 to 2001, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002, where he currently holds a Professor position with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof. Hespanha is Associate Director for the Center for Control, Dynamical-systems, and Computation (CCDC), Vice-Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB). From 2004—2007 he was an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. His current research interests include hybrid and switched systems; the modeling and control of communication networks; distributed control over communication networks (also known as networked control systems); the use of vision in feedback control; and stochastic modeling in biology. Dr. Hespanha is the recipient of the Yale University’s Henry Prentiss Becton Graduate Prize for exceptional achievement in research in Engineering and Applied Science, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2005 best paper award at the 2nd Int. Conf. on Intelligent Sensing and Information Processing, the 2005 Automatica Theory/Methodology best paper prize, and the 2006 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award. Dr. Hespanha is a Fellow of the IEEE and an IEEE distinguished lecturer since 2007.

Awards/Honors

• George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, 2006
• Automatica Theory/Methodology best paper prize, 2005
• Recipient Henry’s Becton Graduate Prize, Yale University, 1998
• Recipient, National Science Foundation Career Award

Selected Publications

• A Model for Stochastic Hybrid Systems with Application to Communication Networks, Nonlinear Analysis Special Issue on Hybrid Systems, 62, 2005, 1353-1383, João Hespanha, web link
• Nonlinear Norm-observability notions and stability of switched systems, EEE Trans. on Automat. Contr., 50, 2005, 154-168,, João Hespanha, Daniel Liberzon, David Angeli, Eduardo Sontag, web link
• On input-to-state stability of impulsive systems, Proc. of the 44th Conf. on Decision and Contr., 2005, João Hespanha, Daniel Liberzon, Andrew Teel, web link
• Polynomial Stochastic Hybrid Systems. In Manfred Morari, Lothar Thiele, Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, 2005, 322-338, João Hespanha, web link
• Chaohong Cai, Ricardo Sanfelice. Hybrid Systems: Generalized Solutions and Robust Stability, Proc. of the 6th IFAC Symp. on Nonlinear Contr. Systems, 2004, Rafal Goebel, João Hespanha, Andrew Teel, web link
• Chapter Stabilization Through Hybrid Control, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), 2004, João Hespanha, web link
• Examples of GES systems that can be driven to infinity by arbitrarily small additive decaying exponentials, IEEE Trans. on Automat. Contr., 49(8), 2004, 1407-141, Andrew Teel, João Hespanha, web link
• Uniform Stability of Switched Linear Systems: Extensions of LaSalle's Invariance Principle, IEEE Trans. on Automat. Contr., 49(4), 2004, 470-482, Joao Hespanha, web link
• Switching Between Stabilizing Controllers, Automatica, 38(11), 2002, 1905-1917, Joao Hespanha, web link
• Eigenfaces vs. Fisherfaces: Recognition Using Class Specific Linear Projection, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Special Theme Issue on Face and Gesture Recognition, 19(7), 1997, 711-720, Peter Belhumeur, João Hespanha, David Kriegman, web link