Mission: To establish a strong, interdisciplinary, research and development base for industrial control. To help local business to achieve and maintain the state of art control technology. To provide problem solving expertise in process control, motion control, medical electronics, distributed control systems, etc.  To maintain a hands-on learning environment for students to develop and apply new technologies to solve real-world problems. 

• Undergraduate students: Eric Skrout;
• Master students: Ivan Jurcic, Madhura Shaligram, Marius Marita, Michael Gray;
• Doctoral students: Zhan Ping.

• NASA Glenn Research Center
•  Eveready Battery Company
• Black and Decker
• AlliedSignal Automotive
• Nordson Co.
• Invacare Co.
• Rockwell Automation
• CAMP/AMC

·         Advanced nonlinear control algorithm development:

Nonlinear PID, active disturbance rejection, self-tuning control, system identification, fuzzy logic, adaptive control, robust control, distributed control systems;

·         Hardware in the loop simulation and rapid prototyping: electronic design, circuit layout, in-circuit emulation, enclosure, testing;

·         Development of digital control at all levels:

            PC based process control system

DSP board (customer design and out-of-shelf) based system

Microcontroller/DSP chip based systems using: Intel 8096, Intel 80196, Motorola HC11E9, Motorola HC12A4, TI320 series;

·         Intelligent signal processing;

·         Real-time Fault Diagnosis/Identification.

·         Self-Tuning Web Tension Regulation

·         Advanced Industrial Temperature Control

·         Automated Screw Fastening for a Assembly Line

·         Pressure Control for a Medical Electronics Application

·         High Speed Motion Control In a Manufacturing Process

·         On-line Motor Vibration Analysis In a Manufacturing Process

·         Applications of Fuzzy Logic Control

·         Nonlinear digital control applications in space power electronics

About the Director: Dr. Gao joined the Fenn College of Engineering in 1990, upon graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.  The driving force behind his work is to bridge the gap between control research and the engineering practice and make research relevant to industrial applications, which lead to the establishment of the Applied Control Research Lab in 1995 and the Advanced Engineering Research Lab in 1999. Dr. Gao was the author or co-author of many journal and conference publications, encompassing areas such as linear systems, robust stability, system identification, fuzzy logic control, real-time self-tuning, fault-tolerant control system, manufacturing system, etc.  He was also invited to give seminars, workshops, and training courses on various topics related to advances in control technology at the  ISA Meetings, NASA Glenn Research Center, AlliedSignal, Energizer, Allen-Bradley, Bailey Control, Ohio Aerospace Institute, University of Akron, etc.

All of papers below are in Adobe PDF format

• “Nonlinear Digital Control Implementation for a DC-DC Power Converter”, Jack Zeller, Minshao Zhu, Tom Stimac, and Zhiqiang Gao. 36^th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, July 29-August 2, 2001.

• “An Alternative Paradigm for Control System Design”, Zhiqiang Gao and Yi Huang, To be presented at the 2001 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

• “A Novel Motion Control Design Approach Based on Active Disturbance Rejection”, Zhiqiang Gao, Shaohua Hu, and Fangjun Jiang. To be presented at the 2001 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

• “Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Web Tension Regulation”, Yi Hou, Zhiqiang Gao, Fangjun Jiang, and Brian T. Boulter. To be presented at the 2001 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

• “An Application of Nonlinear PID Control to a Class of Truck ABS Problems”, Fangjun Jiang and Zhiqiang Gao. To be presented at the 2001 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

• “From Linear to Nonlinear Control Means: A Practical Progression”, Presented at the ISA Emerging Technology Conference, September 12, 2001; To appear in ISA Transactions.

• “Design and Implementation of a Digital Controller for DC-DC Power Converters”, John Sustersic, Zhiqiang Gao, John R. Zeller, and Robert Button, SAE Power System Conference, Oct. 2000.

• "Fuzzy Logic Control of an Industrial Indexing Motion Application", Wilfred Nonnenmacher and Zhiqiang Gao, Presented at the ISA Conference, September 10-13, 2001.

• “A Novel PID Controller for Pneumatic Proportional Valves with Hysteresis”, Majed (Marv) Hamdan, and Zhiqiang Gao, IEEE Industrial Application Society 2000 Annual Meeting and World Conference on Industrial Applications of Electrical Energy, Oct. 8-12, 2000.

• “A Novel Self-Tuning Control Design Approach for Industrial Applications”, Richard J. Eucker and Zhiqiang Gao, IEEE Industrial Application Society 2000 Annual Meeting and World Conference on Industrial Applications of Electrical Energy, Oct. 8-12, 2000.

• “A Stable Self-Tuning Fuzzy Logic Control System for Industrial Temperature Control Problems”, Zhiqiang Gao, Thomas A. Trautzsch, and James Dawson, IEEE Industrial Application Society 2000 Annual Meeting and World Conference on Industrial Applications of Electrical Energy, Oct. 8-12, 2000; Accepted for publication in IEEE IAS Transactions.

• “Book Review: Fuzzy Control by K. Passino and S. Yurkovich”, Zhiqiang Gao, IEEE Transaction On Automatic Control, Vol 45, NO. 10, October 2000.

• “An Adaptive Nonlinear Filter Approach to Vehicle Velocity Estimation for ABS”, Fangjun Jiang and Zhiqiang Gao, Proceedings of 2000 IEEE International Conference on Control Applications, pp.490-495, Anchorage, September 25-27, 2000.

• “Model Based Diagnosis of Chaotic Vibration Signals”, I. Wattar, W. Hafez, and Z. Gao, IEEE Industrial Electronics Conference, San Jose, California, Nov. 29 – Dec. 3, 1999.

·         “Novel Control Approaches For Web Tension Regulation” Yi Hou, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, July 2001.

·         “On High Performance Servo Control Solutions for Hard Disk Drive”, Shaohua Hu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, April 27, 2001.

·         “A Novel Feedback Control Approach to a Class of Anti-Lock Brake Problems”, Fangjun Jiang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, May 1, 2000.

·         “A Model Based Approach to Vibration Analysis and Diagnosis”, Ihab Wattar, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, April 24, 2000.

·         “System Identification from Frequency Response Using Matrix Interpolation Theory”, Razvan V. Savescu, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, Oct. 1992.

·         “Linear Model Following Design Approach and Stability Robustness in Reconfigurable Control Systems”, Nitin Dhayagude, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, August 1993.

·         “A Computer Algorithm for Multi-input multi-output system identification Using Chebychev Polynomials”, Bruce Tabachnik, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, May 1994.

·         “Fuzzy Logic Control of Linear Systems with Variable Time Delay”, James G. Dawson, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, June 1994.

·         “Matrix Interpolation Based Self-Tuning Web Tension Regulation”, Brian Boulter, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, October 1995.

·         “Self-Tuning Temperature Control Using Fuzzy Logic”, Thomas A. Trautzsch, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, June 1996.

·         “A New Method of Designing Automated Tape Wrapping”, Seung Lee, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, December 1996.

·         “A Microcontroller Based General Purpose Control System Development Platform”, Jianming Zhao, , Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, March 1997.

·         “Modified PID Control of Pneumatic Valves with Hysteresis”, Majed M. Hamdan, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, April 1997.

·         “Fuzzy Logic Position Control of a Servo Motor”, Wilfred Nonnenmacher, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, April 1997.

·         "Fuzzy Logic Positional Servo Motor Control Development Platform", David J. Elliott, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, June 1997.

·         "Optimizing Servo Motor Selection for Rapid Incremental Motion Applications", Tianli Liu, Department of Electrical Engineering, Cleveland State University, September 1997.

·         “Self-Tuning Control Systems Using Matrix Interpolation”, Richard J. Eucker, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, December 17, 1998.

·         “A Novel Design Approach and Software Implementation for Servo Systems”, Chunming Yang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, December 17, 1998.

·         “A Practical Design Approach for Micro-Controller Based Control Systems”, Weiping Zou, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, December, 1999

·         “Digital Control of a 1-KW DC-DC Switching Power Converter”, Tomislav J. Stimac, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, December, 2000.