control

This is a recent research topic concerning the study of nonlinear and/or distributed systems which exhibit transitions from regular to complex behaviour as some system parameters are varied. The purpose of the control designer is to ensure that for a certain parameter region the system shows a desired dynamical behaviour. Such a problem points out issues that are quite new within the control theory context.
Examples pertaining this research topic: periodic orbits stabilization, design of chaotic oscillators, optimal mixing fluid systems, pattern formation, solitary waves propagation, etc.

Secure communications via chaotic maps
Design and validation of digital schemes for secure communications based on chaotic maps. Past results have led to a prototypal realization via DSP of schemes based on "dead-beat" synchronization. The actual objective is to optimize the choice of the chaotic map and its parameters, investigating its behaviour in a real application context and its robustness against unauthorized receiver attacks.

Nonlinear dynamics in neural network circuits
The overall objective consists in the investigation of the qualitative behaviour of nonlinear differential systems of the neural type, with special attention to the competitive cellular neural networks with piecewise linear activations. These systems are quite frequently applied in several engineering areas for solving real-time tasks such as on-line optimization problems, images classification, speech/text recognition.

The members of the Group at the present time are: R. Genesio (professor), A. Tesi (professor), G. Zappa (professor), M. Basso (researcher).