Ramprasad Potluri

Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Kanpur - 208 016, Uttar Pradesh

Telephone: +91-512-2596093(Work) +91-512-2598837 (Res)
Fax: +91-512-2590063
E-mail: potluri[AT]iitk.ac.in
Address: Western Labs 217 A, IIT Kanpur-208 016

1. R. Potluri, and Arun Kant Singh. Path-tracking control of an autonomous 4WS4WD electric vehicle using its natural feedback loops. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. 23.5 (2015): 2053-2062.
2. Arun Kant Singh and R. Potluri. Comments on ''Model-Independent Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Output Tracking Control of 4WS4WD Road Vehicles''. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.16.3 (2015): 1588-1593.3.
3. Manavaalan Gunasekaran and R. Potluri. Low-cost undergraduate control systems experiments using microcontroller-based control of a DC motor. IEEE Transactions on Education. 55.4 (2012): 508-516.
4. R. Potluri, Comments on ''Chattering Free Robust Control for Nonlinear Systems''. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 562 - 562, March 2012.
5. R. Potluri. Comments on ''Optimal Fault-Tolerant Path-Tracking Control for 4WS4WD Electric Vehicles''. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 12.2 (2011): 622-623.
6. R. Potluri and L.E. Holloway. Determining the right-hand vectors of an irredundant linear inequality system”. Operations Research Letters. vol. 34, Issue 4, July, 2006. Pages 373 – 381.

1. Arun Kant Singh and R. Potluri. CAN-Based Networked Path-Tracking Control of a 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle: Selection of Sampling Interval and Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation.
2. Manavaalan Gunasekaran, R. Potluri, and Ashish Dutta. Path Tracking Control of a Moon Rover: Modeling, Design, and Practical Implementation.
3. R. Potluri, Ashwin Verma, and Arunava Karmakar. Graphical Design of PID Controller for First Order Plus Time Delay Plant with Constraints on Gain and Phase Margins and Peak Complementary Sensitivity.

1. Neeraj Matiyali and R. Potluri. Disturbance Observer for Multivariable Speed-Dependent Disturbance in DC Motors. Indian Control Conference, IEEE, Hyderabad, India, 2016.
2. Ramprasad Potluri, Pushpak Bhole, and Abhishek Verma. Disturbance Observer for Speed-Dependent Disturbance in Motor Control. Indian Control Conference. IEEE. IIT Madras, Chennai, India. January 2015.
3. Manavaalan Gunasekaran, Ramprasad Potluri, and Ashish Dutta. Path Tracking Control of a Moon Rover. Indian Control Conference. IEEE. IIT Madras, Chennai, India. January 2015.
4. Potluri, Ramprasad; Singh, Arun Kant, Path-Tracking Control of an Autonomous 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle Using its Natural Feedback Loops. 2013 IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control (MSC 2013), Hyderabad, India. 28 - 30 August 2013.
5. Saurav, Kumar; Potluri, Ramprasad, "Sensorless speed control of a permanent magnet DC motor by compensating the plant nonlinearities," 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), pp.1 - 4. Taipei, Taiwan. 28-31 May 2013.
6. Manavaalan Gunasekaran and Ramprasad Potluri. Kinematics Modeling and Design of Motion Controller for a Moon Rover. 11th International Symposium on Advanced Vehicle Control (AVEC'12). Sept. 9 - 12, 2012, Seoul, Korea.
7. Ramprasad Potluri and Arun Kant Singh. Path-tracking control of an autonomous 4WS4WD electric vehicle using driving motors' dynamics, 7th IEEE International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), 2012, pp.1-6, 6-9 Aug. 2012, IIT Madras, Chennai, India.
8. Manavaalan Gunasekaran and Ramprasad Potluri. Cooperative control of a dual-motor ball and beam system. INDICON 2008. IEEE, 2008.
9. Ramprasad Potluri, et al. Networked Control Systems and a Mixed Open-Loop/Closed-Loop Control. Advances in Control and Optimization of Dynamical Systems (ACODS), IISc, Bangalore, India, February 2007.
10. S Kyavars, R Potluri. Optimal Train Rescheduling for Single Track Railway Line. Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI), 2005.
11. Potluri, R. and L. E. Holloway. Modeling and control of halfspace systems. Proceedings of the 35th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory. IEEE, West Virginia, USA. 2003.
12. Potluri, R. and Holloway, L.E. Control of uncertain systems represented by linear constraints: maintainability. American Control Conference. Chicago, USA. 2000. Vol. 3, pages 1899 – 1903.

1. Arunava Karmakar started work in January 2014 on the topic of consensus of distributed multi-agent systems.
2. Dileep Kumar joined in July 2015 on the topic of Human-in-the-loop control of a full size 4WS4WD electric vehicle.
3. Rintu Bhaskar started work with Dr. Pankaj Wahi (ME Department) and me in 2016 on the topic of robots for the nuclear industry.
4. Chintu Gurbani started work in May 2017.

1. Soham Chatterjee. Consensus Problems of Uncertain Heterogeneous Nonlinear Agents. 30-Nov-2016. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
2. Anagani Prudhvi Sagar. Selection of Sampling Period in CAN-Based AFS and DYC of a Four-Wheel Independent Drive Electric Vehicle. 24-Aug-2016. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
3. Shailendra Pratap Singh. Automatic Book Page Turner. 16-Aug-2016. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
4. Amit Kumar Roy. Design of Operator Interface for 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle. 12-Jul-2016. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
5. Neeraj Matiyali. Disturbance Observer-Based Rejection of Speed-Dependent Disturbance in a System of DC Motors. 30-Apr-2016. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
6. Karthik Thota. 8051 Microcontroller based Human machine interface for a Digital Excitation Control System. 14-Jul-2009. Advisor: Potluri Ramprasad.
7. Jitendra Bharadwaj. Development of a search-capable automatic book scanner machine. 7-Aug-2008. Advisors: KS Venkatesh and Potluri Ramprasad.
8. Kamala Kant. Compensation of Delay in Networked Control System in Deregulated Automatic Generation Control. 23-Jul-2008. Advisors: Sri Niwas Singh and Potluri Ramprasad.
9. Sanjay Kumar Giri. Experiments with LonWorks Mini EVK. 18-Jul-2008. Advisor: Ramprasad Potluri.
10. Awadhesh Kumar Chaudhury. CAN-based DC Motor Networked Control System. 18-Jul-2008. Advisor: Ramprasad Potluri.
11. SRC Batchu Murthy. A DSP Hardware and Software Platform with RS232 and CAN Communication Capabilities and HMI for Power Applications. 17-Jul-2007. Advisors: Partha Sarathi Sensarma and Potluri Ramprasad.

1. Introduction to Controller Area Network. July 09, 2009. Lohia Starlinger, Kanpur.
2. Path-Tracking Control of an Autonomous 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle Using Driving Motors' Dynamics. August 17, 2012. Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur.
3. Path-Tracking Control of an Autonomous 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle Using its Natural Feedback Loops. April 02, 2013. Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, Nuzvid, Andhra Pradesh.
4. A low-cost undergraduate control systems laboratory. Webinar organized by Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education. March 31, 2014.
5. Path-Tracking Control of an Autonomous 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle Using its Natural Feedback Loops. International Seminar on ``Electric Vehicle (EV)/Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Technology''. February 21, 2014. Rajarajeswari College of Engineering. Bangalore.
6. Path-Tracking Control of Electric Vehicles with Independently Driven and Steered wheels (Including Networking Issues). October 17, 2014. Fourth Annual Workshop of Automatic Control and Dynamic Optimization society (ACDOS) on ``Industrial Applications of Advanced Control and Estimation''. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
7. Application of input-to-state stability theory in an electric vehicle. November 15, 2014. Short term course on Nonlinear Control and their Applications. Department of Electrical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT) Allahabad.
8. Classical loop-shaping for SISO systems, path-tracking control of a 4WS4WD electric vehicle, and disturbance observer for multivariable motor speed-dependent disturbance. IIT Kanpur, TEQIP School on Systems and Control, August 2015.
9. Path-Tracking Control of Electric Vehicles with Independently Driven and Steered wheels. September 15, 2015. Malviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.
10. Amitava Gupta and Ramprasad Potluri. Control over networks: Theory and practice. 3-hour tutorial. Indian Control Conference 2016, Hyderabad.

1. AK Singh (PhD student), Uday Mazumdar (Lab Superintendent), R. Potluri. Low-cost four-wheel steering four-wheel drive electric vehicle scale testbed. 2014. This testbed is not sold off-the-shelf. I may be able to buy it for about a crore rupees. Instead, we built it at IITK for about 2 lakh rupees using DST-FIST and DST-SERC funds. We have already performed experiments with distributed and networked control systems, in addition to electric vehicles.
2. AK Singh (PhD student) and R. Potluri. Low-cost system hardware-in-the-loop simulator of networked control systems. 2014 - 2015. This simulator is built using the microcontroller boards that we built for the EE380 control systems laboratory. This simulator helps test the performance of a serial bus-based, and in particular, a Controller Area Network (CAN)-based, networked control system. The hardware is the CAN protocol, while the remaining control system is simulated in the microcontroller boards.
3. Manavaalan G. (former PhD student), R. Potluri, and Ashish Dutta. A path-tracking control system for planetary rovers. 2013 - 2014. This control system helps users perform various maneuvers with an all-terrain rover that ISRO plans to place on the moon. Dr. Ashish Dutta of ME-IITK built the mechanical structure of this moon rover, while Manavaalan and I built the electrical and control portion. Our path-tracking control system has shown the best performance in our laboratory trials from among the existing path-tracking control systems of rovers. Funding: A sponsored project between IITK and ISRO-VSSC.
4. Karthik Kumar Thota (former MTech student), R. Potluri, and P. Sensarma. Human-machine interface for the controller of a digital automatic voltage regulator. 2010. Built for BHEL Bhopal and transferred to it after rigorous laboratory tests by BHEL Bhopal.
5. P. Sensarma and R. Potluri. Controller of a digital automatic voltage regulator. 2010. Built for BHEL Bhopal and transferred to it after rigorous laboratory tests by BHEL Bhopal.
6. Manavaalan G. and R. Potluri. Low-cost Control Systems Laboratory. 2009. This laboratory can be marketed as a product. Please see its description under the head of Contributions to the Institute.
7. Manavaalan G. and R. Potluri. Dual-motor ball-beam testbed. 2008. This testbed helps study multi-motor cooperation. We built it under 1 lakh rupees.

1. Networked Control Systems Laboratory: Here we research control systems in which multiple individual control systems either cooperate among themselves or are coordinated by a supervisor, with all these entities communicating with each other over a serial communication link. Reconfigurability, fault-tolerance, and reduced wiring are the advantages of such control systems. However, the communication is bandwidth-constrained, leading to challenges such as time delays. The products listed above under the Technology Development head have come from this laboratory.
2. A new low-cost control systems laboratory and module of experiments: The laboratory is organized around experimental setups that my students and I built in-house. We also developed a set of laboratory experiments that give students crucial skills. Thus the setups and experiments helped obviate the need for more expensive setups. We saved the taxpayer more than half a crore Rupees in 2009 itself, when we introduced this laboratory, instead of the kind of control systems laboratory that is found in most other educational institutes in India. Further, the setups are repaired by our own laboratory personnel. So, the annual cost of maintenance of all the setups does not exceed about Rupees 20 – 30 thousand. On the other hand, expensive setups, not developed in-house, would have cost lakhs of Rupees in repairs every year. The laboratory has run successfully since 2009 every year, serving EE380. I have gradually begun using it for PG experiments. If adopted across India, this laboratory can save crores of rupees for our country, in addition to helping produce control engineers that have confidence in their skills. This laboratory has already attracted the attention of several engineering colleges such as BIT (Mesra), IIIT (Delhi), CMR Institute of Technology (Bangalore), Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology (Gujarat), IIIT Allahabad, and MNIT Jaipur, whose faculty members sought to emulate its experiments and its model of building the experimental setups in-house. I built this laboratory so that we could directly use its experimental setups in a four-wheel steering four-wheel drive electric vehicle (4WS4WD EV) scale testbed and in the testbed for the moon rover project that IITK had with ISRO. The setups have been used in the 4WS4WD EV testbed and in an MTech thesis work titled "Automatic Book Page Turner".

1. July 31 - August 4, 2017: Short-term QIP-sponsored course on "Frequency Domain Control System Design and Experiments".
2. March 25 & 26, 2006: Workshop on Recent Advances in Controls and Sensors.

1. Human-Driven Full-Size 4WS4WD Electric Vehicle. About 64 lakhs. 2017 - 2020. I am the PI, with Dr. Shakti Singh Gupta of the ME department of IIT Kanpur as the Co-PI.
2. Automatic Book Copier. 15 lakhs. 2017 - 2019. I am the PI, with Prof. KS Venkatesh of the EE department of IIT Kanpur as the Co-PI.
3. Path-tracking control of a four-wheel drive four-wheel steering electric vehicle. About 20 lakhs. 2012 - 2016. I was the PI, with Dr. Nischal Verma of the EE department of IIT Kanpur as the Co-PI.

1. Editor of IETE Technical Review in the area of Controls Engineering, 2014 onwards.
2. Member of the International Program Committee of Indian Control Conference 2015.
3. Member of the International Program Committee of Indian Control Conference 2016.
4. Member of Technical Committee of INDICON 2008, organized at IIT Kanpur in 2008.
5. Organizer of Workshop on Recent Advances in Controls and Sensors, at IIT Kanpur in 2006.
6. Reviewer for various journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.

There is a significant theory-practice gap in the field of control systems. Towards the end of my PhD studies, I saw this gap as an opportunity and have focused at IITK on contributing to bridging this gap. My research at IITK has focused on developing control systems-based products that could have good economic and humanitarian value. Validating my work through experimental results is an integral part of my research. For the validation I use scale test beds wherever possible, building in-house at a fraction of the cost of buying from abroad. My research has emphasized building assets for my country, instead of buying from abroad.

One of the products is a four-wheeled electric vehicle (EV), in which each wheel is driven by an independent electric motor and is steered by another independent electric motor (4WS4WD EV). This EV is motivated by the fact that energy efficient low-pollution vehicles are urgently needed to mitigate the pollution caused by the existing road vehicles. Calculations done by my students suggest that 4WS4WD EVs have 30% greater well-to-wheel efficiency (WWE) than conventional EVs, which in turn have 30% greater WWE than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. The efficiency translates into lowered pollution. Additionally, 4WS4WD EVs are maneuverable to the extent that they have zero turning radius. This maneuverability helps them negotiate tight corners easily, thus helping save real estate allocated to roads. Therefore, 4WS4WD EVs are ideal for public transportation within cities, as well as to ferry goods and people within airports, harbors, factories, campuses, and other spaces where making wide turns is not economical or possible. In summary, 4WS4WD EVs are essential for a sustainable habitat.

The 4WS4WD EV presents many interesting control theoretic problems, such as coordinating the multiple motors for the EV to travel on even or uneven roads efficiently, designing the networked control system for such coordination, and coordination of the multiple motors of a version of this EV that can change its size on the move.