Dawn Tilbury

I am a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I have a courtesy appointment in the EECS department. You can find my CV here. My research interests lie in the area of control systems, and I am a member of the Robotics Group and the Controls Group in the College of Engineering.

We are looking for a Postdoc in the area of Robotics and Control for Smart Manufacturing Systems

My undergraduate degree is in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. I did my M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of California in Berkeley, in the EECS Department in the Intelligent Machines and Robotics Laboratory. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to be a visiting scholar at various places including: the robotics group at LAAS in Toulouse, LSS at Supelec in Paris, LIDS at MIT, and the robotics lab at Harvard.

During my sabbatical leave in 2001-2002, I was an Academic Visitor at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY in the Performance Management Group, and a Visiting Professor at ITIA, the Institute for Industrial Technologies and Automation, in Milan, Italy. During the summer of 2003, I was a summer professor intern at DaimlerChrysler in the Advance Manufacturing Engineering group in Auburn Hills, MI. In May 2004, I taught a course (ME 360) at Shanghai JiaoTong University as part of the UM-SJTU cooperative agreement. I am an alumna of the Defense Science Study Group; see Annie Anton's web page for a description of our activities. I am also a former member of the Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group.

During my sabbatical leave in 2010-11, I was a Guest Professor in the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University in Sweden. I worked on the DIAdvisor project.

From 2017 to 2021, I served as Assistant Director for Engineering at the National Science Foundation.

My office number is 3464 G. G. Brown, phone (734) 936-2129, fax (734) 647-9379, and my mailing address is:

Mechanical Engineering Department
University of Michigan
2250 G. G. Brown Building
2350 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125 USA

but it's much easier to just send email: tilbury@umich.edu.

Research

My lab website is: http://tillab.engin.umich.edu

My research interests include control theory and applications in many different domains. Within the ERC for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems, I have worked in the areas of logic control and networked control systems. We have a Reconfigurable Factory Testbed (RFT) on which we implement many of the control methodologies that we develop. We published some of our testing results for wireless networks in a Wireless Test Results Booklet.

I was the director of the Ground Robotics Research Center on reliability of autonomous ground vehicles. The robotics activities are now within the ARC, and I was Deputy Director of the Automotive Research Center (ARC) from 2011-2013. My research includes developing methods to improve reliability through reconfigurable control and enhanced human-machine interfaces. I am also helping to organize the Robotics Initiative within the College of Engineering.

I previously worked with colleagues at IBM in the application of control theory to computing systems, see our book on Feedback Control of Computing Systems. I have also done some work in nonlinear control, both theory and applications, looking at problems of trajectory generation and stabilization for nonlinear systems, and applications to such systems as a helicopter and mobile robots.

The best way to find a listing of my publications is via my Google Scholar profile.

Service

ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division

From July 2010 through June 2011, I was the Chair of the DSCD.

Mentoring and Networking Workshop for Junior Women Faculty in the Big 10

In April 2010 and 2013, I co-organized the Big 10 Women's Workshop in Milwaukee. The purposes of the workshop were to provide a professional networking opportunity, cultivate peer collaboration and mentoring relationships, and foster interactions between junior women faculty and senior women faculty role models.

ASME-DSC Conference 2008

I was on the organizing committee for the first Annual ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, held in Ann Arbor, October 20-22, 2008.

WODES 2006

I co-organized the 8th International Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (WODES), held in Ann Arbor, July 10-12, 2006. Check the website for photos of the conference, banquet, and dinner trek.

Workshop on Logic Control

In June 2000, I co-organized a Workshop on Logic Control for Manufacturing Systems, which brought together industry practitioners and academic researchers to discuss problems and solutions. One of the outcomes of the workshop was a list of the Top 10 Challenges in Logic Control for Manufacturing Systems.

Teaching

ME360, Modeling, Analysis, and Control of Dynamic Systems.: Fall 1997, Winter 1998, Winter 2000, Winter 2001, Winter 2003, Winter 2004, Fall 2006, Winter 2009, Fall 2009, Fall 2013.
ME395, Laboratory I.: Winter 1999, Winter 2000, Fall 2002, Winter 2004, Winter 2005, Winter 2006, Winter 2012, Winter 2016
ME461, Automatic Control.: Winter 1995, Winter 1996, Fall 1998, Fall 1999, Fall 2005, Fall 2011, Winter 2017.
ME540/Aero540, Introduction to Dynamics.: Fall 2004.
ME561/EECS561/Aero571, Design of Digital Control Systems.: Winter 1997.
ME564/EECS560/Aero550, Linear Systems Theory.: Fall 1996, Fall 1998, Fall 2000, Fall 2012.
ME/EECS/Mfg 567, Introduction to Robotics: Winter 2007, Winter 2008, Winter 2013, Winter 2015
ME662/EECS 662/Aero 672, Advanced Nonlinear Control.: Fall 1995.

Control Tutorials for Matlab and Simulink

In conjunction with teaching ME461, I developed a set of web-based tutorials to introduce students to the use of Matlab for the design and analysis of control systems. These tutorials won an Undergraduate Computational Science Award from the US Department of Energy through the Ames Laboratory, and the Educom Medal, nominated by ASME. The NSF supported the original development these tutorials. An updated (for Matlab 5) and expanded (to include Simulink tutorials) version of the tutorials was published by Addison-Wesley (now Prentice Hall) in 1999. The tutorials were completely updated in 2012 by Professors Bill Messner and Rick Hill.

Linear Systems Theory on YouTube

When I taught Linear Systems Theory (ME 564/EECS 560/Aero 550) in Fall 2012 I asked the students in class to create videos about some of the concepts we covered. The purpose of the video assignment was for students to get to know some other students in class. Some of the videos have been posted to YouTube, follow the link above.

8/2/21