Niklas Schmid
Ph.D. Student
Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA), ETH Zürich
Supervisors: Prof. John Lygeros, Prof. Tobias Sutter
Contact: nikschmid@ethz.ch
Physikstrasse 3, ETL K12, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Summary
I am a Ph.D. student at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich under the supervision of Professor John Lygeros and Professor Tobias Sutter. My research focuses on the control of stochastic systems under safety constraints, which includes the analysis of reachability, invariance, and chance-constrained optimal control problems. Therefore, I utilize tools from dynamic programming and convex optimization.
News
11.04.2024: Our new paper "Peak Time-Windowed Risk Estimation of Stochastic Processes" is now available on Arxiv!
02.03.2024: Our new paper "Joint Chance Constrained Optimal Control via Linear Programming" is now available on Arxiv!
19.12.2023: Our new paper "Computing Optimal Joint Chance Constrained Control Policies" is now available on Arxiv!
25.09.2023: Our new paper "Parallel Rollout for Deterministic Optimal Control" is now available on Arxiv!
03.03.2023: Our new paper "Probabilistic Reachability and Invariance Computation of Stochastic Systems using Linear Programming" has been accepted for publication at the IFAC World Congress 2023 in Yokohama, Japan.
Biography
Since Nov 2021
Ph.D. at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland); Supervisors: Prof. John Lygeros, Prof. Tobias Sutter
2020 - 2021
Internship at Olympus Surgical Technologies Europe (Berlin, Germany); Control of electrosurgical generators and modelling of tissue impedance
2019 - 2021
M.Sc. in Medical Engineering Science at University of Lübeck, (Lübeck, Germany); Thesis: Gaussian Process based MPC of Tethered Quadcopters
2016 - 2019
B.Sc. in Medical Engineering Science at University of Lübeck, (Lübeck, Germany); Thesis: Cooperative Localization of Quadcopters using Factor Graphs
Publications
All of my publications are available as open-access on Arxiv!
Preprint: J. Miller, N. Schmid, M. Tacchi, D. Henrion, R. S. Smith, "Peak Time-Windowed Risk Estimation of Stochastic Processes", Arxiv, 2024, Arxiv-Link.
Preprint: N. Schmid, M. Fochesato, T. Sutter and J. Lygeros, "Joint Chance Constrained Optimal Control via Linear Programming", Arxiv, 2024, Arxiv-Link.
Preprint: N. Schmid, M. Fochesato, S.H.Q. Li, T. Sutter and J. Lygeros, "Computing Optimal Joint Chance Constrained Control Policies", Arxiv, 2023, Arxiv-Link.
Preprint: Y. Li, A. Karapetyan, N. Schmid, J. Lygeros, K. H. Johansson and J. Martensson, "Parallel Rollout for Deterministic Optimal Control", Arxiv, 2023, Arxiv-Link.
N. Schmid and J. Lygeros, "Probabilistic Reachability and Invariance Computation of Stochastic Systems using Linear Programming", 22nd IFAC World Congress, Yokohama, Japan, 2023, pp. 11229-11234, doi: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2023.10.853. Arxiv-Link, Publisher-Link.
J. Gruner, N. Schmid, G. Männel, J. Grasshof, H. S. Abbas and P. Rostalski, "Recursively Feasible Model Predictive Control using Latent Force Models Applied to Disturbed Quadcopters", 2022 IEEE 61st Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Cancun, Mexico, 2022, pp. 1013-1020, doi: 10.1109/CDC51059.2022.9992944. Publisher-Link.
N. Schmid, J. Gruner, H. S. Abbas and P. Rostalski, "A real-time GP based MPC for quadcopters with unknown disturbances", 2022 American Control Conference (ACC), Atlanta, USA, 2022, pp. 2051-2056, doi: 10.23919/ACC53348.2022.9867594. Arxiv-Link, Publisher-Link.
Teaching
Teaching has a high priority for me. I believe that it is our responsibility to share our fascination and knowledge to inspire future generations of students in the same way that it has been shared with us.
Courses
A brief summary of my teaching experience:
Spring 2024: Assisting the Nonlinear Systems and Control Lecture lecture by Dr. Eduardo Gallestey and Dr. Raffaele Soloperto.
Fall 2023: Assisting the Control Systems lecture by Prof. Florian Dörfler.
Spring 2022 - Fall 2023: Organization of our lab’s General Laboratory (hands-on course for students to explore control theory in a learning-by-doing fashion on actual physical systems).
Fall 2018 - Spring 2021: Design and presentation of practical and theoretical exercise sessions for an electronics lecture by Prof. Philipp Rostalski at the University of Lübeck.
Fall 2018: Supervision of students in practical exercise sessions on radioactivity.
Student Projects
I usually have several open student projects available. Feel free to contact me at any time if you are looking for a Bachelor-, Semester-, or Master-project based around control theory and hands-on applications.
Open thesis projects:
Currently no projects available.
Current thesis projects:
Control of an Inverted Pendulum (Ariel Bergmann, Bachelor Thesis)
Meta-Learning Model Predictive Control for the Ball-On-A-Plate System (Alexander Kaspar, Semester Project - Co-Supervised by Jiaqi Yan and Riccardo Zuliani)
Meta-Learning Reinforcement Learning for the Ball-On-A-Plate System (Mirco Vandeventer, Semester Project - Co-Supervised by Jiaqi Yan)
Completed thesis projects:
Hardware Reconfiguration and Control of the Ball-On-A-Plate System (Simon Frölich, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2024)
Hydroponics - Mechanics (Gian-Andrin Coolen, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2024)
Hydroponics - Electronics (Oscar Kläsi, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2024)
Hydroponics - Sensing and Control (Leo Noth, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2024)
Hydroponics - Software Design and Control (Daniel Böhler, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2024)
MPC of the Mounted-Helicopter Experiment (Alexander Kaspar, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2023)
Improved Reinforcement Learning Control of the Ball-On-A-Plate System (Elias Bai, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2023)
LQR and Reinforcement Learning Control of a Ball-On-A-Plate System (Joram Ebinger, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2023)
Water-Level Sensing for the Quad-Tank Experiment (Gentrit Gashi, Bachelor Thesis, Completed 2023)