Farshad Harirchi

Yuhao Ding, Farshad Harirchi, Sze Zheng Yong et al.

This paper considers the optimal design of input signals for the purpose of discriminating among a finite number of affine models with uncontrolled inputs and noise. Each affine model represents a different system operating mode, corresponding to unobserved intents of other drivers or robots, or to fault types or attack strategies, etc. The input design problem aims to find optimal separating/discriminating (controlled) inputs such that the output trajectories of all the affine models are guaranteed to be distinguishable from each other, despite uncertainty in the initial condition and uncontrolled inputs as well as the presence of process and measurement noise. We propose a novel formulation to solve this problem, with an emphasis on guarantees for model discrimination and optimality, in contrast to a previously proposed conservative formulation using robust optimization. This new formulation can be recast as a bilevel optimization problem and further reformulated as a mixed-integer linear program (MILP). Moreover, our fairly general problem setting allows the incorporation of objectives and/or responsibilities among rational agents. For instance, each driver has to obey traffic rules, while simultaneously optimizing for safety, comfort and energy efficiency. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach for identifying the intention of other vehicles in several driving scenarios.

Farshad Harirchi, Sze Zheng Yong, Necmiye Ozay

This paper considers the problem of fault detection and isolation (FDI) for switched affine models. We first study the model invalidation problem and its application to guaranteed fault detection. Novel and intuitive optimization-based formulations are proposed for model invalidation and T-distinguishability problems, which we demonstrate to be computationally more efficient than an earlier formulation that required a complicated change of variables. Moreover, we introduce a distinguishability index as a measure of separation between the system and fault models, which offers a practical method for finding the smallest receding time horizon that is required for fault detection, and for finding potential design recommendations for ensuring T-distinguishability. Then, we extend our fault detection guarantees to the problem of fault isolation with multiple fault models, i.e., the identification of the type and location of faults, by introducing the concept of I-isolability. An efficient way to implement the FDI scheme is also proposed, whose run-time does not grow with the number of fault models that are considered. Moreover, we derive bounds on detection and isolation delays and present an adaptive scheme for reducing isolation delays. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated using several examples, including an HVAC system model with multiple faults.

Farshad Harirchi, Doohyun Kim, Omar A. Khalil et al.

Chemical kinetic mechanisms can be represented by sets of elementary reactions that are easily translated into mathematical terms using physicochemical relationships. The schematic representation of reactions captures the interactions between reacting species and products. Determining the minimal chemical interactions underlying the dynamic behavior of systems is a major task. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for the identification of the influential reactions in chemical reaction networks for combustion applications, using a data-driven sparse-learning technique. The proposed approach identifies a set of influential reactions using species concentrations and reaction rates, with minimal computational cost without requiring additional data or simulations. The new approach is applied to analyze the combustion chemistry of H2 and C3H8 in a constant-volume homogeneous reactor. The influential reactions identified by the sparse-learning method are consistent with the current kinetics knowledge of chemical mechanisms. Additionally, we show that a reduced version of the parent mechanism can be generated as a combination of the influential reactions identified at different times and conditions and that for both H2 and C3H8 this reduced mechanism performs closely to the parent mechanism as a function of ignition delay over a wide range of conditions. Our results demonstrate the potential of the sparse-learning approach as an effective and efficient tool for mechanism analysis and mechanism reduction.

Farshad Harirchi, Omar A. Khalil, Sijia Liu et al.

In this paper, we propose an optimization-based sparse learning approach to identify the set of most influential reactions in a chemical reaction network. This reduced set of reactions is then employed to construct a reduced chemical reaction mechanism, which is relevant to chemical interaction network modeling. The problem of identifying influential reactions is first formulated as a mixed-integer quadratic program, and then a relaxation method is leveraged to reduce the computational complexity of our approach. Qualitative and quantitative validation of the sparse encoding approach demonstrates that the model captures important network structural properties with moderate computational load.