Section: Overall Objectives

Control, Transport and Dynamics

Our goal is to develop methods in geometric control theory for finite-dimensional nonlinear systems, as well as in optimal transport, and to transfer our expertise through real applications of these techniques.

Our primary domain of industrial applications in the past years is space engineering, namely designing trajectories in space mechanics using optimal control and stabilization techniques: transfer of a satellite between two Keplerian orbits, rendez-vous problem, transfer of a satellite from the Earth to the Moon or more complicated space missions. A second field of applications is quantum control with applications to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and medical image processing. A third and more recent one is the control of micro-swimmers, i.e. swimming robots where the fluid-structure coupling has a very low Reynolds number.

There is also a form of transfer to other mathematical fields: some problems in dynamical systems are being solved thanks to control theory techniques.