Heat Engines Lab,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Peradeniya,
Peradeniya,20400,
Sri Lanka
D. H. S. Maithripala started his career as a University academic in 2006 at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering , University of Ruhuna, Galle, Sri Lanka. Since 2009 he has been serving as a Senior Lecturer of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He has also served as a visiting research scholar at the Nanotech center of Texas Tech University on several occasions and currently serves as a visiting Associate Professor of the Systems and Controls Department of IIT-Bombay. He has so far received four presidential awards in recognition for high impact scientific publications in Sri Lanka and his research interests include decision making theory, and nonlinear geometric control with a focus on autonomous navigation and control of unmanned vehicles.
Geometirc Control with applications to autonomous navigation and control of unmanned vehicle:
Geometric controls deal with designing controllers that are independent of the coordinates used to describe the system. Such methods have the advantage of having the largest region of stability possible, being computationally efficient, and have a very wide range of applicability. Over the years as part of an ongoing collaboration with CodeGen Int. Pvt. Ltd. we have successfully implemented such a controller, "An Intrinsic Robust PID Controller on Lie Groups", on a wide range of seemingly different systems. The videos of some such implementations and associated developments can be found below:
Decentalized coodinated behavior of multi agent systems
We have used a Virtual Structure (VS) Based method for solving the problems of formation keeping, reconfiguration, and formation arrival. In essence each agent maintains a fully actuated rigid body model that represents the desired global nature of the coordinated behavior and solves a local tracking problem of tracking a trajectory that is described with respect to the VS. The nearest neighbor communication of the VS state along with a consensus algorithm then guarantees that the formation objectives are met. We are currently involved in implementing such methods in a real Multi Agent MRUAV setting. The following two papers summarize the method.
Decision making theory:
Currently we are investigating the possibility of developing solutions for Multi Armed Bandit problems in a Multi Agent setting were the communications are of a stochastic nature.
Classical Mechanics from an Intrinsic View Point,Classical Thermodynamics, Basic Vibration Theory
One credit hour short course on Mechanics from a geometric Viewpoint, R. N. Banavar and D. H. S. Maithripala (IITB, 4th to 16th August 2019) - Google class room code wugg87
You can find lecture resources HERE
Senior Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).
Recipient of four Presidential awards for high impact factor research publications in Sri Lanka -- 2017, 2015, 2010, 2009
National Research Council merit award for high impact factor research publications in Sri Lanka in the year 2013
Best professor award given by the Pi Tau Zigma society of the Texas Tech University, USA, Spring 2002.
A. Nayak, R. N. Banavara, and D. H. S. Maithripala, “Almost-global tracking for a rigid body with internal rotors”, European Journal of Control, Available online 28 February 2018
T. W. U. Madhushani, D. H. S. Maithripala, J. V. Wijayakulasooriya, and Jordan M. Berg, “Semi-globally Exponential Trajectory Tracking for a Class of Spherical Robots”, Automatica, 85, 327-338, 2017
D. H. S. Maithripala and J. M. Berg "An intrinsic PID controller for mechanical systems on Lie groups", Automatical, 54, 189-200, 2015
D. H. A. Maithripala, D. H. S. Maithripala, S. Jayasuriya, "A Geometric Approach to Dynamically Feasible, Real-Time Formation Control", Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, 133(2): 021010, 2011
N Stojanovic, DHS Maithripala, JM Berg, M Holtz,"Thermal conductivity in metallic nanostructure at high temperature: Electrons, phonons and the Wiedemann-Franz law", Physical Review B 82 (7), 075418, 2010
I. P. M. Wickramasinghe, D. H. S. Maithripala, B. D. Kawade, J. M. Berg, and W. P. Dayawansa, “Passivity- Based Control of a 1-DOF Electrostatic MEMS Model with a Parasitic Capacitance,” IEEE transactions on Control Systems Technology, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 249—256, January 2009
D. H. S. Maithripala, Jordan M. Berg and W. P. Dayawansa, “Almost-Global Tracking of Simple Mechanical Systems on a General Class of Lie Groups,” Trans. of the IEEE journal on Automatic Control, 51(1), pp 216—225, Jan. 2006
D. H. S. Maithripala, W. P. Dayawansa and Jordan M. Berg, “Intrinsic Observer-Based Stabilization For Simple Mechanical Systems on Lie Groups,” SIAM Journal on Optimization and Control, Vol 44, No 5, pp. 1691 – 1711, published online 22 November 2005
D. H. S. Maithripala, B. D. Kawade, J. M. Berg, and W. P. Dayawansa, “A General Modeling and Control Framework for Electrostatically-Actuated Mechanical Systems,” International Journal of Robust and Nonlin- ear Control, Special Issue on Control at the Nanoscale, Vol. 15, pp. 839 – 857, published online 15 September 2005
D. H. S. Maithripala, Jordan M. Berg and W. P. Dayawansa, “Control of an Electrostatic MEMS Using Static and Dynamic Output Feedback,” ASME Journal of Dynamical Systems Measurement and Control, Vol 127, pp 443 – 450, 2005
S Ekwaro-Osire, DHS Maithripala, JM Berg, “ A series expansion approach to the interpretation of the spectra of the Timoshenko Beam”, Journal of sound and Vibration, vol 240 (4), 667-678, 2001
P. Pankayaraj, D. H. S. Maithripala, and J. M. Berg, "A decentralized policy with logarithmic regret for a class of multi-agent multi-armed bandit problems with option unavailability constraints and stochastic communication protocols", in the Proceedings of the 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, December 14-18, 2020
P. Pankayaraj, D. H. S. Maithripala, and J. M. Berg, "A Decentralized Communication Policy for Multi Agent Multi Armed Bandit Problems", in the Proceedings of the European Control Conference, Saint Petersburg, Russia, July 12-15, 2020
Nair, S.H., Banavar, R.N., Maithripala, D.H.S., "Control Synthesis for an Underactuated Cable Suspended System Using Dynamic Decoupling", Proceedings of the American Control Conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA, July 10-12, 2019
W. M. L. T. Weerakoon, T. W. U. Madhushani, D. H. S. Maithripala, and Jordan M. Berg, “Feedback Regularization and Geometric PID Control for Robust Stabilization of a Planar Three-link Hybrid Bipedal Walking Model”, Proceedings of the American Control Conference, Milwaukee Wisconsin, USA, June 27-29, 2018
T. W. U. Madhushani, D. H. S. Maithripala, and Jordan M. Berg, “Feedback Regularization and Geometric PID Control for Trajectory Tracking of Coupled Mechanical Systems: Hoop Robots on an Inclined Plane”, Proceedings of the American Control Conference, Seattle WA, USA, June 24-26, 2017
D. H. S. Maithripala and Jordan M. Berg, “Robust Tracking Control for Underactuated Autonomous Vehi- cles Using Feedback Linearization”, Proceedings of the IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, JULY 8-11, BESANC ́ON, FRANCE, 2014
D. H. S. Maithripala, J. M. Berg, “An intrinsic robust pid controller on lie groups”, Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, CA, Dec. 15–17, 2014
D. H. S. Maithripala, Jordan M. Berg, D. H. A. Maithripala, and S. Jayasuriya, “A Geometric Virtual Structure Approach to Decentralized Formation Control”, Proceedings of the American Control Conference, Portland, USA, June 4-6, 2014
Jordan M. Berg, D. H. S. Maithripala, Qing Hui, Wassim M. Haddad. “Thermodynamics-Based Network Systems Control by Thermal Analogy”, Proceedings of the 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Maui, Hawaii, Dec. 10-13, 2012
Implementation of an almost globally stable intrinsic nonlinear PID controller for attitude stabilization of a quadrotor J Somasiri, KGB Gamagedara, DHS Maithripala, JM Berg, 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), Dec. 2015
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