Research Areas
Residential-Scale Microgrid
Research Activities:
· Disaster relief
· Household and community resiliency enhancement
· Microgrid design with 12 kW solar panels, 3 kW wind turbine, and SYNDEM converters
· Back to back grid converter for system-backup
Sample Publication:
Q.-C. Zhong, Y. Wang, and B. Ren. Connecting the Home Grid to the Public Grid: Field Demonstration of Virtual Synchronous Machines. IEEE Power Electronics Magazine, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 41 – 49, 2019.
Microgrid Control
Research Activities:
· Autonomous operation in grid-connected or islanded mode
· Load sharing among parallel operation of inverters
· Stable operation and disturbance rejection
· Regulation of voltage and frequency
· Lab-scale microgrid platform with 8 nodes, including wind, solar, battery, generator, utility grid interface, and flexiable loads
Sample Publication:
Y. Wang, B. Ren, and Q.-C. Zhong. Robust Power Flow Control of Grid-Connected Inverters. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 63, no. 11, pp. 6887-6897. 2016.
Wind Energy & Grid Integration
Research Activities:
· Generator control in wind turbine
· Power flow control in weak grid
· Wind farm optimization with wake effects
· Integration of renewables with utility grid
Sample Publication:
B. Ren, Y. Wang, and Q.-C. Zhong. UDE-based Control of Variable-speed Wind Turbine Systems. International Journal of Control. vol. 90, no. 1, pp. 137-152. 2017.
Solar Energy & Grid Integration
Research Activities:
· Smart PV inverter technology
· Applications of PV + energy storage
Sample Publication:
Y. Wang, and B. Ren. Fault Ride-Through Enhancement for Grid-tied PV Systems with Robust Control. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 2302-2312. 2018.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Research Activities:
· Robust control/Geometric control
· Critical infrastructure health monitoring (e.g., wind turbine, oil/gas pipeline)
· Control of micro-UAVs in vortex flow
· Autonomous shipboard landing and take-off
· Solar powered UAVs
· Wireless charging system for UAVs
Sample Publication:
B. Ren, S. S. Ge, C. Chen, C.-H. Fua and T. H. Lee. Modeling, Control and Coordination of Helicopter Systems. Springer, 2012.
MEMS
Research Activities:
· Precise motion control in piezoelectric stage with hysteresis compensation
· Hysteresis modeling and continuous control of functional oxide films (VO2)
Sample Publication:
B. Ren, J. Dai, and Q.-C. Zhong. UDE-based Robust Output Feedback Control with Applications to a Piezoelectric Stage. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 7819 – 7828, 2020.
Marine / Offshore Systems
Research Activities:
· Station keeping and vibration control of mooring systems
· Offshore wind energy harvesting
Manufacturing
Research Activities:
· Laser pulse shaping and optimization
· Stage positioning control in motion systems
Sample Publication:
B. Ren, P. Frihauf, R. J. Rafac, and M. Krstic. Laser pulse shaping via extremum seeking. Control Engineering Practice. vol. 20, no. 7, pp. 674-683. 2012.
Control Theory
· Robust Control
· Adaptive Control
· Neural Networks
· Boundary Control of Systems Modeled by PDEs
· Real-time Optimization with Extremum Seeking
Sample Publications:
- Y. Wang, B. Ren, and Q.-C. Zhong. Bounded UDE-based Controller for Input Constrained Systems with Uncertainties and Disturbances. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 2020. DOI: 11.1109/TIE.2020.2969069.
- B. Ren, J. Dai, and Q.-C. Zhong. UDE-based Robust Output Feedback Control with Applications to a Piezoelectric Stage. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 7819 – 7828, 2020.
- J. Dai, and B. Ren. UDE-based Robust Boundary Control for an Unstable Parabolic PDE with Unknown Input Disturbance. Automatica, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 11403-11408. 2018.
- B. Ren, Q.-C. Zhong, and J. Dai. Asymptotic Reference Tracking and Disturbance Rejection of UDE-Based Robust Control. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 3166-3176. 2017.
- B. Ren, Q.-C. Zhong, and J. Chen. Robust Control for a Class of Non-affine Nonlinear Systems Based on the Uncertainty and Disturbance Estimator. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics. vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 5881–5888. 2015.
- B. Ren, S. S. Ge, K. P. Tee, and T. H. Lee. Adaptive Neural Control for Output Feedback Nonlinear Systems Using a Barrier Lyapunov Function. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. vol. 21, no.8, pp. 1339-1345. 2010.