GRASP Seminar Series: Spring 2006

February 10, 12:00 p.m., Wu & Chen Auditorium

Claire Tomlin
University of California at Berkeley

"Distributed optimization for multiple aircraft and airlines"

Abstract: We present a simple decentralized algorithm to solve optimization problems involving cooperative agents. Cooperative agents share a common objective and simultaneously pursue private goals. Furthermore, agents are constrained by limited communication capabilities. The algorithm is based on dual decomposition techniques and appears to be very intuitive. It solves the dual problem of an artificially decomposed version of the primal problem, replacing one large computationally intractable problem with many smaller tractable problems. It returns a feasible solution to the primal problem as well as an upper bound on the distance between this solution and the global optimum. Both convex and nonconvex examples of multiple interacting aircraft are presented.

In the second part of the talk, the methodology is extended to treat competitive agents, and is applied to multiple, competing airlines in the National Airspace System.

Biography: Claire Tomlin received her Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley in 1998. She received her B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1992, and her M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, England in 1993.


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