MERL - Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories

Dynamical Systems

Exploiting nonlinearity and shaping dynamics in creative and deeply mathematical ways.

We apply dynamical systems theory in applications ranging from space probe trajectory optimization to elevator suspensions. We also develop fundamental theory and computational methods in fluid dynamics.

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  • Awards

    •  AWARD    MERL’s Paper on Wi-Fi Sensing Earns Top 3% Paper Recognition at ICASSP 2023, Selected as a Best Student Paper Award Finalist
      Date: June 9, 2023
      Awarded to: Cristian J. Vaca-Rubio, Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, Petros Boufounos and Petar Popovski
      MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
      Brief
      • A MERL Paper on Wi-Fi sensing was recognized as a Top 3% Paper among all 2709 accepted papers at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2023). Co-authored by Cristian Vaca-Rubio and Petar Popovski from Aalborg University, Denmark, and MERL researchers Pu Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, and Petros Boufounos, the paper "MmWave Wi-Fi Trajectory Estimation with Continous-Time Neural Dynamic Learning" was also a Best Student Paper Award finalist.

        Performed during Cristian’s stay at MERL first as a visiting Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and then as a full-time intern in 2022, this work capitalizes on standards-compliant Wi-Fi signals to perform indoor localization and sensing. The paper uses a neural dynamic learning framework to address technical issues such as low sampling rate and irregular sampling intervals.

        ICASSP, a flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), was hosted on the Greek island of Rhodes from June 04 to June 10, 2023. ICASSP 2023 marked the largest ICASSP in history, boasting over 4000 participants and 6128 submitted papers, out of which 2709 were accepted.
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    •  AWARD    Marcus Greiff receives Outstanding Student Paper Award at CCTA 2022
      Date: August 25, 2022
      Awarded to: Marcus Greiff
      MERL Contact: Marcus Greiff
      Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Robotics
      Brief
      • Marcus Greiff, a Visiting Research Scientist at MERL, was awarded one of three outstanding student paper awards at the IEEE CCTA 2022 conference for his paper titled "Quadrotor Control on SU(2)xR3 with SLAM Integration". The award was given for originality, clarity, and potential impact on practical applications of control. The work presents a complete UAV control system design, facilitating autonomous supermarket inventorying without the need for external motion capture systems. A video of the experiments is on YouTube, including both simulations and real-time examples.
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  • News & Events


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  • Internships

    • ST2025: Background Oriented Schlieren Tomography

      The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking motivated and qualified individuals to develop algorithms that can perform background oriented Schlieren (BOS) tomography. The project goal is to utilize both analytical and learning-based architectures to enable the reconstruction of 3D air flows in an indoor setting from BOS measurements. Ideal candidates should be Ph.D. students and have solid background and publication record in any of the following, or related areas: imaging inverse problems, large-scale optimization, learning-based modeling for imaging, Schlieren tomography, physics informed neural networks. Publication of the results produced during our internships is expected. The duration of the internships is anticipated to be 3-6 months. Start date is flexible.

    • CA1940: Autonomous vehicle planning and contro in uncertain environments

      MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to collaborate with the Control for Autonomy team in research on planning and control for autonomous vehicles in uncertain surrounding environments. The research domain includes algorithms for path planning and control in environments that are uncertain and perceived by sensing and predicted according to models and data. The ideal candidate is expected to be working towards a PhD with strong emphasis in vehicle guidance and control, and to have interest and background in as many as possible of: vehicle dynamics modeling and control, sensor uncertainty modeling, data-driven prediction, predictive control for uncertain systems, motion planning. Good programming skills in MATLAB, Python are required, knowledge of C/C++, rapid prototyping systems, automatic code generation, vehicle simulation packages (CarSim, CarMaker) or ROS are a plus. The expected start of of the internship is in the late Spring/Early Summer 2022, for a duration of 3-6 months.

    • EA2045: Speed-sensorless Control of Electrical Machines

      MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified individual to conduct research/development in speed-sensorless control of electrical machines.



      The ideal candidate should have solid backgrounds in electrical machines, sensorless drives control, dynamical system analysis, signal processing, state estimation, and parameter identification. Demonstrated knowledge of the state-of-the-art sensorless drives control and experience on using dSPACE for real-time HIL experimentation is necessary. Proven record of publishing results in leading conferences/journals is a plus.



      Senior Ph.D. students in electrical engineering, control, and related areas are encouraged to apply. Start date for this internship is as soon as possible and the duration is about 3-6 months.


    See All Internships for Dynamical Systems

  • Openings


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  • Recent Publications

    •  Quirynen, R., Di Cairano, S., "Tailored Presolve Techniques in Branch-and-Bound Method for Fast Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Applications", Optimal Control Applications and Methods, August 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-110 PDF
      • @article{Quirynen2023aug2,
      • author = {Quirynen, Rien and Di Cairano, Stefano},
      • title = {Tailored Presolve Techniques in Branch-and-Bound Method for Fast Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Applications},
      • journal = {Optimal Control Applications and Methods},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = aug,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-110}
      • }
    •  Iqbal, H., Di Cairano, S., Berntorp, K., "Motion Planning of Articulated Vehicles with Active Trailer Steering by Particle Filtering", Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), August 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-101 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Iqbal2023aug,
      • author = {Iqbal, Hassan and Di Cairano, Stefano and Berntorp, Karl},
      • title = {Motion Planning of Articulated Vehicles with Active Trailer Steering by Particle Filtering},
      • booktitle = {Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = aug,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-101}
      • }
    •  Menner, M., Berntorp, K., "Gaussian Processes with State-Dependent Noise for Stochastic Control", IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), August 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-100 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Menner2023aug2,
      • author = {Menner, Marcel and Berntorp, Karl},
      • title = {Gaussian Processes with State-Dependent Noise for Stochastic Control},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = aug,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-100}
      • }
    •  Menner, M., Di Cairano, S., Hamada, M., Gushima, K., "MPC-based Pedestrian Routing for Congestion Balancing", IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), August 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-099 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Menner2023aug,
      • author = {Menner, Marcel and Di Cairano, Stefano and Hamada, Masaki and Gushima, Kota},
      • title = {MPC-based Pedestrian Routing for Congestion Balancing},
      • booktitle = {IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = aug,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-099}
      • }
    •  Suda, T., Shimane, Y., Elango, P., Weiss, A., "DEEP REINFORCEMENT LEARNING FOR STATION KEEPING ON NEAR RECTILINEAR HALO ORBITS", AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialist Conference, August 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-098 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Suda2023aug,
      • author = {Suda, Takumi and Shimane, Yuri and Elango, Purnanand and Weiss, Avishai},
      • title = {DEEP REINFORCEMENT LEARNING FOR STATION KEEPING ON NEAR RECTILINEAR HALO ORBITS},
      • booktitle = {AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialist Conference},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = aug,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-098}
      • }
    •  Greiff, M., Di Cairano, S., Mansour, H., Berntorp, K., "A Generalized GraphEM for Sparse Time-Varying Dynamical Systems", World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), July 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-086 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Greiff2023jul2,
      • author = {Greiff, Marcus and Di Cairano, Stefano and Mansour, Hassan and Berntorp, Karl},
      • title = {A Generalized GraphEM for Sparse Time-Varying Dynamical Systems},
      • booktitle = {World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-086}
      • }
    •  Thaker, P., Di Cairano, S., Vinod, A.P., "Bandit-based multi-agent search under noisy observations", World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), July 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-085 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Thaker2023jul,
      • author = {Thaker, Parth and Di Cairano, Stefano and Vinod, Abraham P.},
      • title = {Bandit-based multi-agent search under noisy observations},
      • booktitle = {World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-085}
      • }
    •  Di Cairano, S., Skibik, T., Vinod, A.P., Weiss, A., Berntorp, K., "Decision Making for Automated Driving by Reachability of Parameterized Maneuvers", World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), July 2023.
      BibTeX TR2023-084 PDF
      • @inproceedings{DiCairano2023jul,
      • author = {Di Cairano, Stefano and Skibik, Terrence and Vinod, Abraham P. and Weiss, Avishai and Berntorp, Karl},
      • title = {Decision Making for Automated Driving by Reachability of Parameterized Maneuvers},
      • booktitle = {World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC)},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = jul,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2023-084}
      • }
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