Herbert Glenn Tanner

I am working on cooperative control of multi-agent interconnected systems with applications in robotics. Recent work focuses on swarm coordination and formation control, as well as hybrid modeling and abstraction of embedded control systems. My research interests also include nonholonomic systems, motion planning, nonsmooth control, robot force control and deformable material manipulation.

I received my PhD in Mechanical Engineering from NTUA in 2001. The topic of my thesis was "Motion Plannning and Control of Multiple Mobile Manipulators Handling Deformable Objects". From 2001 to 2003 I was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the GRASP Lab. I joined the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico in 2003.

I am a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the IEEE Control Systems Society. I serve as an Associate Editor in the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society , the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and in the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.

Research Interests

My work on interconnected systems brings about the interplay between control and communication: how can control interconnections and information flow affects the stability properties of the group; how can increased network connectivity make the interconnected system more robust; is stability capable of reducing communication overhead ...

Study of flocking and schooling behavior in biological systems motivated the design of local control laws for a group of mobile agents that result in global synchronization and coordinated mot ion of the group. Central to the analysis of this type of motion is the underlying interconnection topology, as expressed by an undirected connected graph. The algebraic properties of the interconnection graph are being exploited in the stability analysis to show that convergence of all agent velocities to a common vector depends on the connectivity of interconnections.

	Animation of the motion of a school of fish using decentralized, local control laws
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Using this framework, flocking behaviors observed in nature can be formally justified, understood and reproduced. Models of flocking and herding have been developed for the purposes of computer animation since as early as 1987, based on the well known Reynolds model which described flocking as a superposition of three basic behaviors: alignment, cohesion and separation between the members of the group.

Another view on stability of interconnected systems highlights the dependence of the stability performance of the group on the way information propagates through the network of interconnections. This analysis yields performance measures which quantify the robustness properties of formations of vehicles based on leader-following.

In leader-following formations, agressive maneuvering requires methods to quantify the effect of leader behavior on the stability of its followers
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Besides describing quantitatively how a formation is going to perform in the presence of disturbances or external inputs provided to the leaders of the group, these measures can be used for comparing different formation architechures as well for satisfying safety specifications.

Control issues in multiple cooperative mobile robotic systems are closely related to similar problems in biology, networking, mobile sensors, wireless telecommunications and many other areas.

Projects

2006		Bayesian 3D Radiation Mapping with Distributed Sensors
2005		CAREER: Formal Cooperative Planning of Decentralized Robot Actions
2005		New Mexico Molecular Libraries Screening Center
2005		Bayesian Radiation Maps for Detection of Weak Radiation Sources by Mobile Robots
2005		SURP:Task-driven multi-formation control for coordinated UAV/UGV ISR missions
2004		SURP:Cooperative Control of Tactical UGVs and UAVs for ISR

Teaching

ME 510 : Nonlinear Systems

ME 480/580: Dynamic Systems Analysis

ME 592: Graduate Seminar (coordinated by Prof. Heinrich)

ME 380: Analysis and Design of Mechanical Control Systems

ME 416/516 Applied Dynamics

ME 581: Digital Control of Dynamical Systems

Contact Information

Publications

1. Michael M. Zavlanos, Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie, and George J. Pappas , "Hybrid Control for Connectivity Preserving Flocking," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2007 (submitted)
2. Herbert G. Tanner, Jorge L. Piovesan and Chaouki T. Abdallah, "Finite Abstractions for General Classes of Hybrid Systems," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2007, (submitted).
3. R.A. Cortez, X. Papageorgiou, H.G. Tanner, A.V. Klimenko, K.N. Borozdin, R. Lumia, J. Wood, and W.C. Priedhorsky, "Smart Radiation Sensor Management; Nuclear Search and Mapping using Mobile Robots," IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 2007 (to appear)
4. Jorge L. Piovesan, Chaouki T. Abdallah, and Herbert G. Tanner, "A Hybrid Framework for Resource Allocation among Multiple Agents Moving on Discrete Environments," Asian Journal of Control, June 2008 (to appear)
5. Herbert G. Tanner and Dimitrios Christodoulakis, “Decentralized Cooperative Control of Heterogeneous Vehicle Groups,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2007 (in press)
6. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, "Flocking in Fixed and Switching Networks," Transactions on Automatic Control, vol 52, no 5, May 2007 pp 863-868.
7. Dushyant Palejiya and Herbert Tanner, "Hybrid Velocity/Force Control for Robot Navigation in Compliant Unknown Environments," Robotica, (c) Cambridge University Press Vol 24, No 06, pp 745--758, November 2006,
8. Amit Kumar and Herbert G. Tanner, "Decentralized Formation Stabilization and Collision Avoidance Using Navigation Functions," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, (submitted)
9. Herbert G. Tanner, "Mobile Manipulation of Flexible Objects Under Deformation Constraints," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol 22, No 1, pp 179--184, February 2006.
10. Georgios Tzeremes, Herbert Tanner, Tsai Liao and Christos Christodoulou, "Wireless Communication with Smart Antennas using Transmission Power Control," IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, Vol 3, No 13, pp 232--235, April 2004
11. Herbert G. Tanner, "ISS Properties of Nonholonomic Vehicles," Systems & Control Letters, Volume 53, No 3-4, November 2004, pp 229-235.
12. Herbert G. Tanner, George J. Pappas and Vijay Kumar, "Leader-to-Formation Stability", IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol 20, no 3, June 2004, pp. 433-455.
13. Herbert G. Tanner, S. Loizou and K. J. Kyriakopoulos, "Nonholonomic Navigation and Control of Cooperating Mobile Manipulators," IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol 19, no 1, February 2003, pp 53-64.
14. Herbert G. Tanner and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, "Backstepping for non smooth systems," Automatica, vol 39, pp 1259-1265, 2003.
15. H. G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Kane's approach to modeling mobile manipulators," Advanced Robotics, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp 57-85, 2002.
16. H. G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Mobile Manipulator Modeling with Kane's Approach," Robotica, Vol. 19, pp. 675-690, 2001.
17. H. G. Tanner, K. J. Kyriakopoulos and N. I. Krikelis, "Advanced Agricultural Robots: Kinematics and Dynamics of Multiple Mobile Manipulators Handling Non-rigid Material," IFAC Journal on Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, special issue on AI and Smart Machines in Agriculture, Elsevier, Volume 31, Issue 1, March 2001, pp 91-105.
18. H. G. Tanner, K. J. Kyriakopoulos and N. I. Krikelis, "Modeling of Multiple Mobile Manipulators Handling a Common Deformable Object," Journal of Robotic Systems 15(11) 599-623 (1998).
19. K. J. Kyriakopoulos, H.G. Tanner and N. I. Krikelis, "Navigation of Nonholonomic Vehicles in Complex Environments with Potential Fields and Tracking," Int. Journal of Intelligent Control and Systems, Vol. 1, No. 4, 487- 495 (1996)

1. Wenqi Zhang and Herbert G. Tanner, "Composition of Motion Description Languages," Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, M. Egerstedt and B. Misrha (eds), Springer 2008 (to appear)
2. Herbert G. Tanner and Amit Kumar, "Formation Stabilization of Multiple Agents Using Decentralized Navigation Functions," Robotics: Science and Systems I, S. Thrun, G. Sukhatme, S. Schaal and O. Brock (eds), MIT Press, 2005, pp 49–56.
3. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, “Flocking in Teams of Nonholonomic Agents,” in S. Morse, N. Leonard and V. Kumar (eds.), Cooperative Control, Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences , Vol. 309 Springer, pp 229-239.
4. H. G. Tanner and K. J. Kyriakopoulos,"A Manipulated Deformable Object as an Underactuated System," in D. Henrich and H. Worn (eds.), Robot Manipulation of Deformable Objects, pp 175-198, Advanced Manufacturing Series, Springer, 2000.

1. R. A. Cortez, H. G. Tanner and R. Lumia, “The Entropy of Cooperative Radiation Sensing by Distributed Sensors,” 2nd ANS International Joint Topical Meeting on Emergency Preparedness & Response and Robotic & Remote Systems, March 2008 (to appear).
2. R. A. Cortez and H. G. Tanner, “Radiation Mapping Using Multiple Robots,” 2nd ANS International Joint Topical Meeting on Emergency Preparedness & Response and Robotic & Remote Systems, March 2008 (to appear).
3. A. Closet, B. Tanner, R. Byrne and C.T. Abdallah, “Controlling Across Complex Networks: Emerging Links between Networks and Control,” Proceedings of the IFAC Time-Delay Symposium, Nantes France, 2007 (to appear).
4. R.A. Cortez, X. Papageorgiou, H.G. Tanner, A.V. Klimenko, K.N. Borozdin and W.C. Priedhorsky, "Experimental Implementation of Robotic Sequential Nuclear Search," IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, 2007 pp 1-6
5. Herbert G. Tanner, “Switched UAV-UGV Cooperation Scheme for Target Detection,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2007 pp. 3457-3462
6. D. Kumar and H.G. Tanner, “How Sensor Graph Topology Affects Localization Accuracy,” European Control Conference, 2007 pp. 868-873
7. Xanthi Papageorgiou, Herbert G. Tanner, and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos “Motion Tasks for Robot Manipulators on Embedded 2-D Manifolds under Input Constraints,” European Control Conference, 2007 (to appear)
8. Jorge L. Piovesan, Chaouki T. Abdallah, and Herbert G. Tanner, “Leader-Follower Control with Odometry Error Analysis,” European Control Conference, 2007 pp. 3783-3789
9. Jorge Piovesan, Chaouki T. Abdallah, Magnus Egerstedt, Herbert Tanner and Yorai Wardi, “Statistical Learning for Optimal Control of Hybrid Systems,” IEEE American Control Conference, 2007, pp 2775-2780
10. Herbert Tanner, Jorge Piovesan, Chaouki T. Abdallah, Discrete Asymptotic Abstractions of Hybrid Systems, 45th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp 917-922
11. Herbert Tanner and Dimitrios Christodoulakis, Cooperation between Aerial and Ground vehicle groups for Reconnaissance missions, 45th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2006 pp. 5918-5923
12. A. Kumar, H.G. Tanner, A.V. Klimenko, and W.C. Priedhorsky, Automated Sequential Search for Weak Radiation Sources, 14th IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, June 28-30, 2006, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy, pp 1-6.
13. A.V. Klimenko, W.C. Priedhorsky, H. Tanner, K.N. Borozdin, and N. Hengartner, “Intelligent Sensor Management in Nuclear Searches and Radiological Surveys,” ANS Transactions, vol 95, pp 21-22, 2006.
14. K. N. Borozdin, A. V. Klimenko, W. C. Priedhorsky, N. W. Hengartner, C. C. Alexander, R. A. Cortez, and H. G. Tanner, Optimized Strategies for Smart Nuclear Search, 2006 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, San Diego CA, pp 926-928
15. Herbert G. Tanner and Dimitrios K. Christodoulakis, "The stability of synchronization in local-interaction networks is robust with respect to time delays," 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2005, pp 4945–4950.
16. Herbert G. Tanner and Amit Kumar, "Towards Decentralization of Mutli-robot Navigation Functions," 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, Spain, pp 4143-4148
17. A. Regmi, R. Sandoval, R. Byrne, H. Tanner and C.T. Abdallah, "Experimental Implementation of Flocking Algorithms in Wheeled Mobile Robots," 2005 American Control Conference, pp 4917 - 4922.
18. Herbert G. Tanner, "On the Controllability of Nearest Neighbor Interconnections," 43rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 14-17 2004. pp 2467-2472
19. Herbert G. Tanner, "Flocking with Obstacle Avoidance in Switching Networks of Interconnected Vehicles," 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, New Orleans LA, April 26-May 1, pp. 3006-3011,
20. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, "Stable Flocking of Mobile Agents, Part I: Fixed Topology," 42nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Maui Hawaii, December 2003, pp. 2010-2015
21. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, "Stable Flocking of Mobile Agents, Part II: Dynamic Topology," 42th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Maui Hawaii, December 2003, pp. 2016-2021
22. Savvas G. Loizou, Herbert G. Tanner, Vijay Kumar and Kostas Kyriakopoulos, "Closed Loop Motion Planning and Control for Mobile Robots in Uncertain Environment", 42th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Maui Hawaii, December 2003, pp. 2010-2015
23. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, "Coordination of Multiple Autonomous Agents", 11th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, Rhodes Greece, 2003
24. Herbert G. Tanner, "ISS Properties of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots", IEEE / RSJ IROS 2003, Las Vegas NV, October 27-31, pp.3799 - 3804
25. Savvas G. Loizou, Herbert G. Tanner, Vijay Kumar and Kostas Kyriakopoulos, "Closed Loop Navigation for Mobile Robots in Dynamic Environments", IEEE / RSJ IROS 2003, Las Vegas NV, October 27-31, pp. 3769 - 3774
26. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas. "Flocks of Autonomous Mobile Agents", Second Annual Symposium on Autonomous Intelligent Networks and Systems, Menlo Park CA, June 30-July 1, 2003.
27. Herbert G. Tanner and George J. Pappas, "Abstractions of Constrained Linear Systems", Proceedings of the 2003 American Control Conference, Denver CO, pp 3381-3386.
28. Herbert G. Tanner, George J. Pappas and Vijay Kumar, "Input-to-State Stability on Formation Graphs", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control, 2002, Las Vegas, NV, pp. 2439-2444.
29. Herbert G. Tanner, Vijay Kumar and George J. Pappas, "Stability Properties of Interconnected Vehicles", Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems, South Bend IN, August 2002.
30. Herbert G. Tanner and George J. Pappas, "Simulation Relations for Discrete-Time Linear Systems", Proceedings of the 15th IFAC World Congress on Automatic Control, Barcelona, Spain, 2002, pp 1302-1307.
31. Herbert G. Tanner and George J. Pappas, "Formation Input-to-State Stability", Proceedings of the 15th IFAC World Congress on Automatic Control, Barcelona, Spain, 2002, pp 1512-1517.
32. Herbert G. Tanner, Vijay Kumar and George J. Pappas, "The effect of Feedback and Feedforward on Formation ISS", Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 11-15, Washington DC, pp 3448-3453.
33. H.G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Discontinuous Backstepping for Stabilization of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots", Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 11-15, Washington DC, pp 3948-3953.
34. H.G. Tanner, S. Loizou and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Nonholonomic Stabilization with Collision Avoidance for Mobile Robots," Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Oct 29- Nov 3, Maui, Hawaii, pp 1220-1225.
35. H. G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Stabilization and Output Tracking for Underactuated Mechanical Systems with Inequality Constraints," Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechantronics, 8-12 July 2001, pp 862-867.
36. H.G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Position and Force Control by Reaction Compensation," Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,  May 21-26, Seoul, Korea, pp. 3926-3931
37. H.  Tanner, S. Loizou,  K. Kyriakopoulos, K. Arvanitis and N. Sigrimis, "Coordinating the Motion of a Manipulator and a Mobile Base in Tree Environments," in Proceedings of the 2nd IFAC/CIGR International Workshop on Bio-Robotics, Information Technology and Intelligent Control for Bioproduction Systems, November 2000, Osaka, Japan, pp 73-78 .
38. H. G. Tanner and K. J. Kyriakopoulos, "Nonholonomic Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulators," in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, San Francisco, April 2000, pp 1233-1238.
39. H. G. Tanner and K. J. Kyriakopoulos, "Analysis of Deformable Object Handling," in Proceedings of the 1999 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Detroit, May 1999, pp. 2674-2679.
40. H. G. Tanner, K. J. Kyriakopoulos and N.I. Krikelis, "Modeling of Multiple Mobile Manipulators Handling a Common Deformable Object," in Proceedings of the 1st IFAC Workshop on Control Applications and Ergonomics in Agriculture, Athens, June 1998, pp. 295-301.
41. H. G. Tanner and K.J. Kyriakopoulos, "Modeling of a Mobile Manipulator with the Use of Kane's Dynamic Equations," in Proceedings of the 3rd IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Madrid, 1998, pp 14-20.
42. H. G. Tanner, K. J. Kyriakopoulos and N. I. Krikelis, "Nonholonomic Vehicle Navigation in Constrained Environments with Direct Use of Potential Fields," in Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Mediterranean Symposium on New Directions in Control Theory and Applications, June 1996, Chania Greece.

1. 1. J. Piovesan, C. Abdallah, H. Tanner, H. Jerez, and J. Khoury. “Resource allocation for multi-agent problems in the design of future communication networks.” EECE-TR-07-001, Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univeristy of New Mexico, April 2007.
2. Andres R. Cortez and Herbert G. Tanner, "Information Surfing for Model-driven Radiation Mapping," ME-TR-07-001, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, June 2007.
3. Herbert Tanner, ``Task-driven multi-formation control for coordinated UAV/UGV ISR missions," ME-TR-06-002, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, October 2006.
4. Deepti Kumar and Herbert G. Tanner, "Increasing the Accuracy of Cooperative Localization by Controlling the Sensor Graph," ME-TR-06-001, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, March 2004.
5. Amit Kumar and Herbert G. Tanner, "Almost Global Asymptotic Formation Stabilization Using Navigation Functions," ME-TR-04-001, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, October 2004.
6. Herbert G. Tanner, Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas, "Stability of Flocking Motion",  Technical Report No MS-CIS-03-03, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, January 2003.

Book Reviews

1. Herbert G. Tanner, "Control Systems with Input and Output Constraints, - A.H. Glattfelder and W. Schaufelberger", Automatica, Volume 41, Issue 4, April 2005, Pages 731-733