Learning to Mitigate Epidemic Risks: A Dynamic Population Game Approach.

We present a dynamic population game model to capture the behavior of a large population of individuals in presence of an infectious disease or epidemic. Individuals can be in one of five possible infection states at any given time: susceptible, asymptomatic, symptomatic, recovered and unknowingly recovered, and choose whether to opt for vaccination, testing or social activity with a certain degree. We define the evolution of the proportion of agents in each epidemic state, and the notion of best response for agents that maximize long-run discounted expected reward as a function of the current state and policy. We further show the existence of a stationary Nash equilibrium and explore the transient evolution of the disease states and individual behavior under a class of evolutionary learning dynamics. Our results provide compelling insights into how individuals evaluate the trade-off among vaccination, testing and social activity under different parameter regimes, and the impact of different intervention strategies (such as restrictions on social activity) on vaccination and infection prevalence.

Data-enabled predictive control for quadcopters.

We study the application of a data-enabled predictive control (DeePC) algorithm for position control of real-world nano-quadcopters. The DeePC algorithm is a finite-horizon, optimal control method that uses input/output measurements from the system to predict future trajectories without the need for system identification or state estimation. The algorithm predicts future trajectories of the quadcopter by linearly combining previously measured trajectories (motion primitives). We illustrate the necessity of a regularized variant of the DeePC algorithm to handle the nonlinear nature of the real-world quadcopter dynamics with noisy measurements. Simulation-based analysis is used to gain insights into the effects of regularization, and experimental results validate that these insights carry over to the real-world quadcopter. Moreover, we demonstrate the reliability of the DeePC algorithm by collecting a new set of input/output measurements for every real-world experiment performed. The performance of the DeePC algorithm is compared to Model Predictive Control based on a first-principles model of the quadcopter. The results are demonstrated with a video of successful trajectory tracking of the real-world quadcopter.