NEWS MERL researchers present 8 papers at ACC 2026

Date released: June 22, 2026

NEWS MERL researchers present 8 papers at ACC 2026
Date:

May 26, 2026 - May 29, 2026
Where:

New Orleans, USA
Description:

MERL researchers presented 8 papers at the recently concluded American Control Conference (ACC) 2026 in New Orleans, USA. The papers covered a wide range of topics including robust controllable set computation, vapor compression cycle calibration, task-reasoning LLM agents, Minkowski-cost stable MPC, polynomial chaos approximation, invariant-set motion planning, heat-pump MPC architectures, and relaxed barrier-function MPC. Additionally, Zhaolin Ren was an invited speaker at Multi-Agent Dynamic Games workshop, and Abraham Vinod served as a panelist at the Professional Development and Career Advice for Young Professionals session.

As a sponsor of the conference, MERL maintained a booth for open discussions with researchers and students, and hosted a special session to discuss highlights of MERL research and work philosophy.
External Link:

https://acc2026.a2c2.org/
MERL Contacts:
Research Areas:

Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization, Robotics
- Related Publications
  Leung, J., Di Cairano, S., "Invariant-set motion-planner for unicycle dynamics under closed-loop feedback linearization", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-064 PDF
  @inproceedings{Leung2026may2,
  author = {Leung, Jordan and {Di Cairano}, Stefano},
  title = {{Invariant-set motion-planner for unicycle dynamics under closed-loop feedback linearization}},
  booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
  year = 2026,
  month = may,
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-064}
  }
  Silvestre, D., Vinod, A.P., "Robust Controllable Set Computation using Constrained Convex Generators", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-063 PDF
  @inproceedings{Silvestre2026may,
  author = {Silvestre, Daniel and Vinod, Abraham P.},
  title = {{Robust Controllable Set Computation using Constrained Convex Generators}},
  booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
  year = 2026,
  month = may,
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-063}
  }
  Leung, J., Vinod, A.P., "A set-based approach for stable MPC with Minkowski cost functions", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-062 PDF
  @inproceedings{Leung2026may,
  author = {Leung, Jordan and Vinod, Abraham P.},
  title = {{A set-based approach for stable MPC with Minkowski cost functions}},
  booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
  year = 2026,
  month = may,
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-062}
  }
  Zinage, S., Dixit, V., Chakrabarty, A., Qiao, H., Laughman, C.R., Bilionis, I., Deshpande, V.M., "Sequential Model Calibration of Vapor Compression Cycles using Approximate Bayesian Computation", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-061 PDF
  @inproceedings{Zinage2026may,
  author = {Zinage, Shrenik and Dixit, Vaibhav and Chakrabarty, Ankush and Qiao, Hongtao and Laughman, Christopher R. and Bilionis, Ilias and Deshpande, Vedang M.},
  title = {{Sequential Model Calibration of Vapor Compression Cycles using Approximate Bayesian Computation}},
  booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
  year = 2026,
  month = may,
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-061}
  }
  Bortoff, S.A., Quah, T., Rawlings, J.B., "A Comparison of MPC Architectures for a Heat Pump", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-060 PDF
  @inproceedings{Bortoff2026may,
  author = {Bortoff, Scott A. and Quah, Titus and Rawlings, James B.},
  title = {{A Comparison of MPC Architectures for a Heat Pump}},
  booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
  year = 2026,
  month = may,
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-060}
  }
  Hu, H., Liu, C., Li, N., Wang, Y., "Training Task Reasoning LLM Agents for Multi-turn Task Planning via Single-turn Reinforcement Learning", IEEE Control Systems Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3642767, Vol. 9, pp. 2879-2884, February 2026.
  BibTeX TR2026-026 PDF
  @article{Hu2026feb,
  author = {Hu, Hanjiang and Liu, Changliu and Li, Na and Wang, Yebin},
  title = {{Training Task Reasoning LLM Agents for Multi-turn Task Planning via Single-turn Reinforcement Learning}},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  year = 2026,
  volume = 9,
  pages = {2879--2884},
  month = feb,
  doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3642767},
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-026}
  }
  Castroviejo-Fernandez, M., Leung, J., "Relaxed barrier function based model predictive control with hard input constraints", IEEE Control Systems Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3645287, Vol. 9, pp. 2927-2932, December 2025.
  BibTeX TR2026-005 PDF
  @article{Castroviejo-Fernandez2025dec,
  author = {Castroviejo-Fernandez, Miguel and Leung, Jordan},
  title = {{Relaxed barrier function based model predictive control with hard input constraints}},
  journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
  year = 2025,
  volume = 9,
  pages = {2927--2932},
  month = dec,
  doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3645287},
  issn = {2475-1456},
  url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-005}
  }