Future Directions in Control in an Information-Rich World

The Panel on Future Directions in Control, Dynamics, and Systems was formed in April 2000 to provide a renewed vision of future challenges and opportunities in the field, along with recommendations to government agencies, universities, and research organizations to ensure continued progress in areas of importance to the industrial and defense base. Its report was released in April 2002 and will be published by SIAM [1]. The intent of the report is to raise the overall visibility of research in control, highlight its importance in applications of national interest, and indicate some of the key trends that are important for continued vitality of the field. The panel was chaired by Professor Richard Murray (Caltech) and was formed with the help of an organizing committee consisting of Prof. Roger Brockett (Harvard), Prof. John Burns (VPI), Prof. John Doyle (Caltech) and Dr. Gunter Stein (Honeywell). The remaining panel members are Karl Åström (Lund Institute of Technology), Siva Banda (Air Force Research Lab), Stephen Boyd (Stanford), Munzer Dahleh (MIT), John Guckenheimer (Cornell), Charles Holland (DDR&E), Pramod Khargonekar (University of Florida), P.R. Kumar (University of Illinois), P.S. Krishnaprasad (University of Maryland), Greg McRae (MIT), Jerrold Marsden (Caltech), George Meyer (NASA), William Powers (Ford), and Pravin Varaiya (UC Berkeley). A writing subcommittee consisting of Karl Åström, Stephen Boyd, Roger Brockett, John Doyle, Richard Murray, and Gunter Stein helped coordinate the generation of the report. The Panel held a meeting on 16-17 July 2000 at the University of Maryland, College Park, to discuss the state of the field and its future opportunities. The meeting was attended by members of the panel and invited participants from academia, industry, and government. Additional meetings and discussions were held over the next 15 months, including presentations at DARPA and AFOSR-sponsored workshops, meetings with government program managers, and writing committee meetings. The results of these meetings, combined with discussions among panel members and within the community at workshops and conferences, form the main basis for the findings and recommendations of the panel.