Ricardo Sanfelice

About

Ricardo G. Sanfelice is a professor specializing in hybrid dynamical systems, cyber-physical systems, and control theory. His research focuses on the modeling, analysis, and control of hybrid systems, which combine continuous and discrete dynamics. He has made significant contributions to hybrid feedback control, hybrid model predictive control, and the stability and robustness of hybrid systems. Sanfelice's work encompasses both theoretical foundations and practical applications, including observer design for hybrid systems and control barrier functions for attack recovery with provable guarantees. He has authored and co-authored numerous books, book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers that address various aspects of hybrid control systems, nonlinear control, and cyber-physical systems. His academic background includes a PhD thesis on robust hybrid control systems from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a BS thesis on current control for AC motors from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Sanfelice's research integrates computational methods, control design, and system stability to advance the understanding and implementation of hybrid dynamical systems in engineering.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Control engineering
• Mathematics
• Applied mathematics
• Law
• Physics
• Environmental science
• Mathematical analysis

Selected publications

• Hybrid Feedback Control

  2021 · 133 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Sufficient conditions for forward invariance and contractivity in hybrid\n inclusions using barrier functions

  Automatica · 2019 · 52 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This paper studies set invariance and contractivity in hybrid systems modeled\nby hybrid inclusions using barrier functions. After introducing the notion of a\nmultiple barrier functions, we investigate the tightest possible sufficient\nconditions to guarantee different forward invariance and contractivity notions\nof a closed set for hybrid systems with nonuniqueness of solutions and\nsolutions terminating prematurely. More precisely, we consider forward\n(pre-)invariance of sets, which guarant…

  DOI

• Robust Coordinated Hybrid Source Seeking With Obstacle Avoidance in Multivehicle Autonomous Systems

  IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control · 2021 · 45 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In multivehicle autonomous systems that operate under unknown or adversarial environments, it is a challenging task to simultaneously achieve source seeking and obstacle avoidance. Indeed, even for single-vehicle systems, smooth time-invariant feedback controllers based on navigation or barrier functions have been shown to be highly susceptible to arbitrarily small jamming signals that can induce instability in the closed-loop system, or that are able to stabilize spurious equilibria in the oper…

  DOI

• Rigid-Body Pose Hybrid Control Using Dual Quaternions: Global Asymptotic Stabilization and Robustness

  Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics · 2020 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  A hybrid feedback control scheme is proposed for stabilization of rigid-body dynamics (position, orientation, and velocities) using unit dual quaternions, in which the dual quaternions and velocities are used for feedback. Specifically, both set-point stabilization and tracking control are addressed in this work. It is well known that rigid-body attitude control is subject to topological constraints, which often result in discontinuous control to avoid the unwinding phenomenon. In contrast, the…

  DOI

• Relaxed Lyapunov Conditions for Compact Sets in Dynamical Systems

  2025-07-08 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  In the setting of continuous-time, discrete-time, and hybrid systems, including differential inclusions and difference inclusions, relaxations are given for Lyapunov functions to establish uniform global pre-asymptotic stability (UGAS) of compact sets. It is shown that for a compact set, if there exist a Lyapunov function and two lower semicontinuous functions that are positive definite with respect to the compact set and whose negations are upper bounds on the rate of change of the Lyapunov fun…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: CPS: Medium: Constraint Aware Planning and Control for Cyber-Physical Systems

  NSF · $616k · 2020–2025

• CAREER: Enabling Design of Future Smart Grids via Input/Output Hybrid Systems Tools

  NSF · $400k · 2012–2014

• CAREER: Enabling Design of Future Smart Grids via Input/Output Hybrid Systems Tools

  NSF · $328k · 2014–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Warren E. Dixon

  University of Florida

  272 shared

• Lorenzo Marconi

  University of Bologna

  270 shared

• João P. Hespanha

  266 shared

• Luca Zaccarian

  265 shared

• Faryar Jabbari

  University of California, Irvine

  264 shared

• Andrew G. Alleyne

  University of Minnesota

  264 shared

• Hitay Özbay

  Bilkent University

  264 shared

• Robert R. Bitmead

  University of California, San Diego

  264 shared

Awards & honors

• 2013 SIAM Control and Systems Theory Prize
• National Science Foundation CAREER award
• Air Force Young Investigator Research Award
• 2010 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award
• 2012 STAR Higher Education Award for his contributions to ST…

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