Ilya Kolmanovsky

• University of Michigan
  • PhD Aerospace Engineering ’95. Advisor: Harris McClamroch
  • MA Applied Mathematics ’95
  • MS Aerospace Engineering ’93

• AERO 347/343 – Space Flight Mechanics
• AERO 470 – Control of Aerospace Vehicles
• AERO 573 – Spacecraft Dynamics and Control
• AERO 575 – Flight and Trajectory Optimization
• AERO 551 – Nonlinear Systems and Control
• AERO 548 – Astrodynamics
• AERO 740 – Model Predictive Control
• ity of Michigan

Professor Kolmanovsky has broad interests in control systems and their applications as enabling technology across different domains.  His recent research focuses on control theory for systems with constraints and on control of advanced aerospace and automotive systems. His recent publications address challenges in spacecraft orbital and attitude control, in control of very flexible aircraft, and in control of engines, propulsion systems and autonomous driving.

Professor Kolmanovsky’s special area of interests in control theory is control of systems with constraints. With the increasing trend towards system downsizing (smaller satellites, air vehicles, drones, engines, etc.) and the growing stringency of requirements, constraint handling and limit protection are becoming increasingly important and critical for engineered systems. Constraints can represent actuator range/rate limits, safety requirements, operational limits, and stationary and moving obstacle avoidance requirements. While in some cases constraint violation has only benign consequences (e.g. loss of efficiency), it can be catastrophic in others. Effective controllers for systems with constraints must be nonlinear and often predictive, and they have to sufficiently but non-conservatively account for the uncertainty in the operating environment. Professor Kolmanovsky’s and his students research addresses the development of variety of schemes for constraint enforcement, including reference governors,, chained invariant/contractive set controllers, and drift counteraction optimal controllers.  Professor Kolmanovsky also conducts research in the general area of model predictive control (MPC) and numerical algorithms for real-time optimization that are used in control of constrained systems. He is interested in applications and demonstration of these algorithms on a variety of space, air, ground and marine vehicle platforms. He is also interested in integrating learning and adaptation into constrained control systems.

• Fellow of IEEE
• Fellow of IFAC
• Fellow of U.S. National Academy of Inventors (NAI)
• AIAA Associate Fellow
• 104 United States patents
• Plenary Speaker at 2022 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
• Plenary Speaker at 41st Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control, 2022
• Ted Kennedy Family Faculty Team Excellence Award of the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, 2020
• Plenary Speaker at 2018 IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control
• Plenary Speaker at 2018 IFAC Engine and Powertrain Control, Simulation and Modeling Conference
• NASA software release award, 2017
• Technology Award of Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), 2015
• Outstanding Paper Award of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2016
• Best Paper Award of the IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics, 2013
• ASEE/Air Force Research Laboratory Summer Faculty Fellowship awarded for Spring/Summer 2012
• ASEE/Air Force Research Laboratory Summer Faculty Fellowship awarded for Spring/Summer 2011
• Technical Achievement Award of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, 2009
• Technical Achievement Award of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, 2004
• Plenary speaker at 2003 American Control Conference
• Eckman Award of American Automatic Control Council, 2002
• Outstanding Paper Award of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2002
• Francois-Xavier Bagnoud doctoral fellow (1994-1995)

• Publications