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Published August 15, 2002 | public
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Control in an Information Rich World: Report of the Panel on Future Directions in Control, Dynamics, and Systems

Abstract

The field of control provides the principles and methods used to design engineering systems that maintain desirable performance by automatically adapting to changes in the environment. Over the last forty years the field has seen huge advances, leveraging technology improvements in sensing and computation with breakthroughs in the underlying principles and mathematics. Control systems now play critical roles in many fields, including manufacturing, electronics, communications, transportation, computers and networks, and many military systems. As we begin the 21st Century, the opportunities to apply control principles and methods are exploding. Computation, communication and sensing are becoming increasingly inexpensive and ubiquitous, with more and more devices including embedded processors, sensors, and networking hardware. This will make possible the development of machines with a degree of intelligence and reactivity that will influence nearly every aspect of life on this planet, including not just the products available, but the very environment in which we live. New developments in this increasingly information rich world will require a significant expansion of the basic tool sets of control. The complexity of the control ideas involved in the operation of the Internet, semi-autonomous command and control systems, and enterprise-wide supply chain management, for example, are on the boundary of what can be done with available methods. Future applications in aerospace and transportation, information and networks, robotics and intelligent machines, biology and medicine, and materials and processing will create systems that are well beyond our current levels of complexity, and new research is required to enable such developments. The purpose of this report is to spell out some of the prospects for control in the current and future technological environment, to describe the role the field will play in military, commercial, and scientific applications over the next decade, and to recommend actions required to enable new breakthroughs in engineering and technology through application of control research.

Additional Information

Panel on Future Directions in Control and Dynamical Systems Report Archive . Panel Membership: Richard M. Murray (chair), California Institute of Technology; Karl J. Åström, Lund Institute of Technology; Pramod P. Khargonekar, University of Florida; Stephen P. Boyd, Stanford University; P. R. Kumar, University of Illinois; Siva S. Banda, Air Force Research Laboratory; P. S. Krishnaprasad, University of Maryland; Roger W. Brockett, Harvard University; Greg J. McRae, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John A. Burns, Virginia Tech; Jerrold E. Marsden, California Institute of Technology; Munzer A. Dahleh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; George Meyer, NASA Ames Research Center; John C. Doyle, California Institute of Technology; William F. Powers, Ford Motor Company; John Guckenheimer, Cornell University; Gunter Stein, Honeywell International; Charles J. Holland, Department of Defense; and Pravin Varaiya, University of California, Berkeley. Preface vii 1 Executive Summary 1 2 Overview of the Field 7 2.1 What is Control? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 Control SystemExamples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.3 The Increasing Role of Information-Based Systems . . . . . . . 18 2.4 Opportunities and Challenges Facing the Field . . . . . . . . . . 20 3 Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges 27 3.1 Aerospace and Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.2 Information and Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 3.3 Robotics and Intelligent Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.4 Biology and Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.5 Materials and Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 3.6 Other Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 4 Education and Outreach 79 4.1 The New Environment for Control Education . . . . . . . . . . 79 4.2 Making ControlMore Accessible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.3 Broadening Control Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 4.4 The Opportunities in K-12 Math and Science Education . . . . 84 4.5 Other Opportunities and Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 5 Recommendations 89 5.1 Integrated Control, Computation, Communications . . . . . . . 89 5.2 Control of Complex Decision Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 5.3 High-Risk, Long-Range Applications of Control . . . . . . . . . 91 5.4 Support for Theory and Interaction with Mathematics . . . . . 92 5.5 New Approaches to Education and Outreach . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.6 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 A NSF/CSS Workshop on Education 97 Bibliography 101 Index 105 Chinese version, 3 December 2003. Translation courtesy of Hong Chen, Jilin University.

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Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023