Challenges to control: A collective view--Report of the workshop held at the University of Santa Clara on September 18-19, 1986

During the last seven years, while structural changes have been taking place in the industrial sector of the U.S. and questions of technological leadership and technology transfer have been debated widely, new areas for research have been developing. This led the leadership of the IEEE Control Systems Society to recommend that a workshop be organized to assess the state of the art of the field and outline directions of research. An Organizing Committee, consisting of D. D. Siljak (Chairman), G. F. Franklin, A. H. Levis, and W. R. Perkins, submitted a proposal to the Systems Theory and Operations Research Program of the National Science Foundation to hold such a workshop at the University of Santa Clara, in Santa Clara, CA, on September 18-19, 1986. As part of the proposal effort, a Steering Committee was constituted to assist the organizers in selecting workshop participants and to carry out the preparalory work for the meeting. The twelve-member Steering Committee consisted of the four organizers and eight other individuals: R. W. Brockett, E. J. Davison, Y.-C. Ho, P. Kokotovic, A. J. Laub, S. 1. Marcus, W. F. Powers, and S. S. Sastry. In early 1986, the organizers issued an open call for participation in the workshop that was published in the April issue of the IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE. in addition, more than 150 letters were sent to leaders in the field, inviting them to apply for participation in the workshop. The Steering Committee was also asked to identify individuals who could provide unique perspectives. The cut-off date for applications, that included a statement of proposed contribution, was May 31. In June, during the 1986 American Control Conference, the Steering Committee met for many hours to select the participants from the many applicants and to decide on the final structure of the program. One of the decisions was to invite all the Presidential Young Investigator awardees who had applied, another was to limit the total number of participants to fifty. In addition to the Steering Committee, the following persons attended and contributed to the deliberations: K. J. Astrom, M. Athans, D. Auslander, J. S. Baras, T. Basar, G. Blankenship, S. P. Boyd, A. E. Bryson, Jr., J. Burns, J. Cassidy, J. B. Cruz, D. F. Delchamps, C. A. Desoer, R. F. Drenick, T. Edgar, J. S. Freudenberg, D. Gangsaas, J. Grizzle, A. H. Haddad, W. E. Hopkins, Jr., M. Ili-Spong, P. loannou, T. L. Johnson, T. Kailath, A. J. Krener, R. E. Larson, W. S. Levine, J. L. Melsa, J. M. Mendel, G. Meyer, J. B. Pearson, H. E. Rauch, G. N. Saridis, J. L. Speyer, J. N. Tsitsiklis, P. Varaiya, G. C. Verghese, M. Vidyasagar, A. S. Willsky, and M. Wonham. The National Science Foundation was represented by Dr. M. P. Polis, Program Director of the Systems Theory and Operations Research Program, and by Dr. G. Hazelrig, Acting Program Director of the Instrumentation, Sensing, and Measurement Systems Program. The workshop was organized into plenary sessions and breakout sessions, during which Working Groups discussed and wrote the material that forms the basis of this report. Seven keynote talks addressed the main themes of the workshop: accomplishments in the past twenty five years and definition of important current and future research problems drawn from the needs of the industrial and service sectors of the economy. The Working Groups were structured so that, while discussions could take place with few constraints, written materials could be produced by the end of each session. To that effect, each group had one or two persons designated as recorders, with the primary responsibility of keeping notes during the discussion and assisting the group leaders in preparing the Working Group draft reports. In order to provide some focus in the deliberations of the Working Groups,eight persons were asked to prepare position statements based on their own perspectives. Seven of these position papers are being published concurrently in the April 1987 issue of the IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE. The eighth one is appearing in this issue of the TRANSACTIONS as a perspectives paper. The findings of the workshop were documented in a final report; the paper that follows is the main body of that report. It was prepared by a group of Editors (A. H. Levis, S. I. Marcus, W. R. Perkins, P. Kokotovic, M. Athans, R. W. Brockett. and A. S. Willsky) on the basis of the contributions, both oral and written, of all the participants, the advocacy papers, and the keynote talks. The draft was reviewed and edited further first by the members of the Steering Committee and then by all the participants. It is indeed a collective effort-A. H. L.