About
Professor Jean-Jacques Slotine is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Information Sciences, and Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Director of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, at age 23. After working at Bell Labs in the computer research department, he joined the faculty at MIT in 1984. Professor Slotine teaches and conducts research in the areas of dynamic systems, robotics, control theory, computational neuroscience, and systems biology.
Research in Professor Slotine’s laboratory focuses on developing rigorous but practical tools for nonlinear systems analysis and control. These have included key advances and experimental demonstrations in the contexts of sliding control, adaptive nonlinear control, adaptive robotics, machine learning, and contraction analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems.
Professor Slotine is the co-author of two popular graduate textbooks, “Robot Analysis and Control” (Asada and Slotine, Wiley, 1986), and “Applied Nonlinear Control” (Slotine and Li, Prentice-Hall, 1991) and is one of the most cited researchers in both systems science and robotics. He was a member of the French National Science Council from 1997 to 2002, and a member of Singapore’s A*STAR SigN Advisory Board from 2007 to 2010. He is currently a member of
the Scientific Advisory Board of the Italian Institute of Technology. He has held Invited Professor positions at College de France, Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Normale Superieure, Universita di Roma La Sapienza, and ETH Zurich.
Professor Slotine is the recipient of the 2016 Rufus Oldenburger Medal.
Research
Adaptation and Learning in Robots; Principles of Biological Control
Professor Slotine is the Director of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory which studies general mathematical principles of nonlinear system stability, adaptation, and learning, and how they apply to robots and to models of biological control. The lab is particularly interested in how stability and performance constraints shape system architecture, representation, and algorithms in robots, and in whether similar constraints may in some cases lead to similar mechanisms in biological systems. Tools from nonlinear control, such as sliding variables, wave variables, and contraction theory also suggest a number of simple models of physiological motor control, which may help understand the specific roles of hierarchies, motor primitives, and nerve transmission delays.
Current projects include:
- Fast motion-vision coordination in robots; robotic catching of free-flying objects
- Models of the cerebellum and stability of biological feedback loops under nerve transmission delays
- Adaptive multiresolution approximation networks for real-time control and prediction
- Stable control using motion primitives; performance of combinations of local and centralized control mechanisms
- Entrainment models in mechanical and biological systems
- Nonlinear observer design techniques for real-time brain imaging
Teaching
9.110J Nonlinear Control System Design
9.175J Robotics
Publications
Rutishauser, U., Slotine, J.J.E., and Douglas, R., "Computation in Dynamically Bounded Asymmetric Systems," PLoS Computational Biology, 11(1), 2015.
Bonnabel, S., and Slotine J.J.E., "A Contraction Theory-Based Analysis of the Stability of the Deterministic Extended Kalman Filter," I.E.E.E. Transactions on Automatic Control, 60(2), 2015.
Zhao, C., Wang, W.X., Liu, Y.Y., and Slotine, J.J.E., "Intrinsic Dynamics Induce Global symmetry in Network Controllability," Scientific Reports, 5, 2015.
Manchester, I.R., Slotine, J.J.E., "Transverse Contraction Criteria for Existence, Stability, and Robustness of a Limit Cycle," Systems & Control Letters, 63, 2014.