2008 Chinese Control and Decision Conferenceieeecss.org/CSM/library/2008/dec08/14-Dec2008ConferenceReport.pdf · 2008 Chinese Control and Decision Conference ... island and ancient

» C O N F E R E N C E R E P O R T S

The Chinese Control and DecisionConference (CCDC) is an annualevent, initiated in 1989. The pur-

pose of the conference is to provide aforum for scientists, engineers, andpractitioners throughout the world topresent the latest theoretical resultsand techniques in the field of systems,control and decision, automation,robotics, and emerging technologies.The 2008 CCDC was held in Yantai,China, July 2–4. The conference venuewas the five-star hotel Yantai OrientHaitian Hotel, located at the center ofthe new coastal scenery area.

The conference was coorganizedby Northeastern University, China,the Industrial Electronics Chapter ofthe IEEE Singapore Section, andLudong University, China. The 2008CCDC was technically cosponsoredby the IEEE Control Systems Society,the IEEE Industrial Electronics Soci-ety, the Automatic Control Society ofthe Chinese Association of Aeronau-tics, the Application Society of Chi-nese Association of Automation and

Intelligent Control, the SimulationMethods and Modeling Society of theChinese Association for SystemSimulations, and the ManagementSociety of the Chinese Association forArtificial Intelligence.

TECHNICAL PROGRAMThe conference received an over-whelming response with a total of1705 submissions from 23 countriesand regions, including Australia,Canada, China, France, Hong Kong,Iran, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mexico,Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Tunisia,United Kingdom, and the UnitedStates. After a rigorous reviewprocess, 1090 papers were accepted.Finally, 1041 papers were registeredand presented in 61 oral sessions andeight poster sessions during the con-ference. The conference was attendedby 520 people from 20 countries andvarious regions.

In addition to the technical sessions,the technical program included fivekeynote speeches and seven semiple-nary talks covering the state-of-the-art in

control and decision. The keynote lec-tures were “Limitation of Markov Mod-els and Event-Based Learning andOptimization,” delivered by Xi-RenCao, The Hong Kong University of Sci-ence and Technology, Hong Kong; “AHybrid Intelligent Optimal ControlMethod for the Whole Production Lineand Applications,” by Tianyou Chai,Northeastern University, China; “Devel-opments in Networked Control,” byGraham C. Goodwin, University ofNewcastle, Australia; “Multi-ControllerMarkov Decision Processes and theValue of Shared Information,” by ThomJ. Hodgson, North Carolina StateUniversity, USA; and “Extremum Seek-ing for Motion Optimization: From Bac-teria to Nonholonomic Vehicles,” byMiroslav Krstic, University of Califor-nia, San Diego, USA.

Semiplenary talks were delivered byJiao-Zhong Gu of FEI.com, Inc., Colum-bia, Maryland, USA on “Cost-Effectiveness Measurement and BudgetControl of a Voucher System for Drugand Alcohol Abstinence in the USA”;Keqin Gu of Southern Illinois Universi-ty, USA on “Large Systems with

Yantai Orient Haitian Hotel, venue of the 2008 CCDC.

2008 Chinese Control and Decision Conference

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2008.930067

Opening ceremony of the 2008 CCDC.

130 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2008

Graham Goodwin delivering his plenary talk. Miroslav Krstic delivering his plenary talk.

Xi-Ren Cao answering questions after delivering his plenary talk,chaired by Changyun Wen.

Tianyou Chai delivering his plenary talk.

One of eight poster sessions.One of seven semiplenary sessions.

Delays in a Small Number of Chan-nels”; Zhong-Ping Jiang of the Polytech-nic University, USA on “AdvancedNonlinear Control: Input-Output andLyapunov Approaches”; John Lygerosof the Swiss Federal Institute of Technol-ogy (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland on “Sto-chastic Hybrid Systems: Theory andApplications”; Minh Q. Phan of Dart-

mouth College, USA on “OptimalModel Predictive Control of VehicleFormations”; Gang Tao of the Universi-ty of Virginia, USA on “Adaptive Con-trol of Systems with Actuator Failures”;and Lihua Xie of Nanyang Technologi-cal University, Singapore, on “Resource-constrained Information Processing inWireless Sensor Networks.”

All sessions, including the plenary,semiplenary, oral, and poster ses-sions, were extremely well attendedand produced active discussions. Theconference banquet, which includedentertainment, was held on theevening of July 3, 2008. A CD-ROM,containing preprints of all thekeynotes, semiplenary talks and

DECEMBER 2008 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 131


Plenary sessions in progress.

Two of 61 oral technical sessions.

papers presented at the conference,was provided to each registered dele-gate. The official conference proceed-ings will be published by IEEE andincluded in IEEE Xplore.

POST-CONFERENCE TOURSLocated in the eastern part o fShandong Peninsula on the coast

of the Bohai Sea and the YellowSea , Yanta i i s one of the mostbeautiful cities in China. It is sur-rounded by mountains and facesthe sea. The city offers picturesquescenery, a pleasant climate, andnice beaches. Yantai is famous fori t s “ immorta l , sea , mountain ,island and ancient culture.”

On July 5, 2008, the conferenceorganized a one-day post conferencetour to visit the Penglai Pavilion andthe Penglai Ocean Polar World.Penglai Pavilion is one of the fourfamous ancient towers in China. Itwas built by Zhu Chuyue, governor ofDengzhou in the 6th Year of Jiayou ofthe Song Dynasty (A.D. 1061). It is a


Banquet of the 2008 CCDC and performance.

Post conference tour of the Penglai Pavilion.

2008 American Control Conference

The 2008 American ControlConference (ACC) was heldWednesday through Friday, June

11–13, 2008 at the Westin Seattle Hotel,Seattle, Washington. The ACC is heldin cooperation with the InternationalFederation of Automatic Control

(IFAC). This premier conference and itsassociated pre- and post-conferenceworkshops focus on advances in thetheory and practice of automatic con-trol. All papers presented were selectedthrough a review process and pub-lished in the conference proceedings.

The ACC is the annual conference ofthe American Automatic ControlCouncil, the U.S. national memberorganization of the IFAC. Nationaland international society cosponsorsof the ACC include the AmericanInstitute of Aeronautics and

wonderful place to view the “immor-tal pavilion in the air” and watch“fisherman singing and fishing.” InPenglai Ocean Polar World, there arenearly one thousand halobios. Over200 delegates participated in the tour.

2009 CHINESE CONTROL ANDDECISION CONFERENCEThe 2009 Chinese Control and Deci-

sion Conference (2009 CCDC) will beheld in Guilin, China on June 17–19,2009. Keynotes addresses on thestate-of-the-art in control and deci-sion will be delivered by TamerBasar, University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, USA, Richard H.Middleton, National University ofIreland Maynooth, Ireland, and GangGeorge Yin, Wayne State University,

USA. For more updated information,please visit the conference websitewww.ccdc.neu.edu.cn.

Changyun Wen, Chair International Technical Program

Guang-Hong Yang, Cochair International Technical Program

Astronautics (AIAA), the American Institute of ChemicalEngineers (AIChE), the Association of Iron and SteelTechnology (AIST), the American Society of Civil Engi-neers (ASCE), the IEEE, the American Society of Mechani-cal Engineers (ASME), the International Society forMeasurement and Control (ISA), and the Society for Com-puter Simulation (SCS).

Over 1000 people attended the conference. The WestinSeattle, the location of the ACC, is conveniently situatedin the heart of the city, just a short walk to popular attrac-tions including Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquari-um, several museums, award-winning restaurants, andan acclaimed nightlife and music scene.

The excellence of the conference program wouldnot be possible without the tremendous contributionsof the authors, plenary speakers, workshop and invit-ed session organizers, and the session chairs. Thelogistics of the conference organization and programwere smoothly carried out through the tireless effortsof the Operating and Program Committees, whichworked on the event over a three-year period prior tothe conference.

THE TECHNICAL PROGRAM The 2008 ACC technical program was put together by theProgram Committee, led by Tariq Samad, who was assist-ed by three vice chairs and 35 members. The programcovered new developments related to theory, application,and education in control science and engineering. Out ofa total of 1283 submissions, the Program Committeeaccepted 879 (757 regular and 122 invited) papers, whichwere organized into 119 regular sessions (including 11 ininteractive presentation format). Vice Chair for InvitedSessions Jing Sun coordinated the selection of 22 invited

Stevan Dubljevic receives the O. Hugo Shuck Award (practice)from Wayne Bequette.

2008 ACC Student Affairs Vice Chair Dawn Tilbury, 2008 ACCGeneral Chair Anuradha Annaswamy, Robert Gregg, ShreyasSundaram, Goele Pipeleers, Yongsheng Ou, and 2008 ACC Pro-gram Chair Tariq Samad.

(From left) Awards Committee Chair Hassan Khalil, AACC Presi-dent Wayne Bequette, 2008 ACC General Chair AnuradhaAnnaswamy, Donald P. Eckman Award winner Asu Ozdaglar, O.Hugo Schuck Award winner (theory) Ali Jadbabaie, O. Hugo ShuckAward winner (practice) Stevan Dubljevic, Control EngineeringPractice Award winner Babatunde A. Ogunnaike, John R. RagazziniAward winner Stephen Yurkovich, Hugo Shuck Award winner (the-ory) Nader Motee, Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award win-ner Pravin Varaiya, and AACC Vice President Tamer Basar.

Awards Committee Chair Hassan Khalik (left) and AACC Presi-dent Wayne Bequette (right) with O. Hugo Shuck Award winnersStevan Dubljevic (practice), Nader Motee (theory), and Ali Jad-babaie (theory).


The Donald P. Eckman Award is presentedto Asu Ozdaglar by Wayne Bequette.

Wayne Bequette. presents the Control Engi-neering Practice Award to Babatunde A.Ogunnaike.

Awardees and attendees at the Awards Ceremony.

2008 ACC Student Affairs Vice Chair DawnTilbury presents the Best Student PaperPresentation Award to Robert Gregg.

sessions, while Vice Chair for Indus-try and Applications Anna Ste-fanopoulou coordinated the selectionof six tutorial sessions. Vice Chair for

Special and Interactive Sessions AtulKelkar supervised the arrangementsfor the 11 interactive sessions. Kelkaralso coordinated the organization of

the special sessions, including indus-try-sponsored sessions on the role ofcontrols and optimization in “green”products, air-traffic management,

AACC Awards Chair Hassan Khalil.

ACC 2008 Operating CommitteeGeneral Chair: Anuradha M. Annaswamy, MIT

Program Chair: Tariq Samad, Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions

Vice Chair for Invited Sessions: Jing Sun, University of Michigan

Vice Chair for Special and Interactive Sessions: Atul Kelkar, Iowa State University

Vice Chair for Industry and Applications: Anna Stefanopoulou, University of Michigan

Workshop Chair: Karlene A. Hoo, Texas Tech University

Finance Chair: Rajesh Rajamani, University of Minnesota

Registration Chair: Carolyn Beck, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Publications Chair: Naira Hovakimyan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Exhibits Chair: Wendy Foslien, Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions

Local Arrangements Chair: Kristi Morgansen, University of Washington

Vice Chair for Student Affairs: Dawn Tilbury, University of Michigan

Publicity Chair: May-Win Thein, University of New Hampshire

Hassan Khalil (left) and Wayne Bequette (right) present the John R.Ragazzini Award to Stephen Yurkovich.



Welcoming Reception


Welcoming Reception


energy-conversion systems, next-gen-eration aerospace, and building andpower systems. Special sessions werealso held on industrial skills for con-trol engineering graduates, academicjob hunting, new funding opportuni-ties from government agencies,including NSF, AFOSR, and NASA,and on hot topics in control such as

systems biology, adaptive neural con-trol, and economic modeling.

Each morning of the three-day con-ference began with a plenary sessionpresented by researchers of interna-tional acclaim. Wednesday’s plenary,“Automotive Systems, An AutomaticControl Bonanza,” was presented byLino Guzella from the Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology (ETH),Switzerland. Thursday’s plenaryspeaker, Mandayam Srinivasan, fromthe Queensland Brain Institute, theUniversity of Queensland, Brisbane,Australia, spoke on “From VisualGuidance in Insects to AutonomousAerial Vehicles.” Friday’s plenary,“Meeting the Need for Robustified

ConferencePhotos


Nonlinear System Theory Concepts,”was presented by Daniel Liberzonfrom the University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA.

The Operating Committee extendsits appreciation to the members ofthe Program Committee for their out-standing job in handling paperreviews, as well as to the eight soci-ety review chairs, Mark Campbell(AIAA), Mayuresh Kothare (AIChE),Yale Zhang (AIST), Jerome PeterLynch (ASCE), Suhada Jayasuriya(ASME), Dan Simon (ISA), ThomasParisini (IEEE), and Mohamed A.Zohdy (SCS). Special thanks go toPradeep Misra and Thomas Parisinifor their tireless efforts in managingthe PaperPlaza system.

WORKSHOPSWorkshop Chair Karlene Hoo organizedthree one-day and one two-day precon-ference workshops held on Monday andTuesday and an NSF-sponsored work-shop on Saturday. The titles of the work-shops are “Robust and AdaptiveControl,” “Model Predictive Control,”“Robust Hybrid Control Systems,” “Sys-tematic Trading Strategies for RobustControl,” and “Networking Across theProfession to Promote the NSF Cyber-Enabled Discoveries and InnovationsInitiative.” Special thanks go to the pre-senters of these outstanding workshops.

AWARDSThe following awards were presentedat the Awards Ceremony prior to the

American Automatic Controls Confer-ence luncheon.

» Richard E. Bellman ControlHeritage Award: To Praveen Vari-aya for his pioneering contribu-tions to stochastic control,hybrid systems and the unifica-tion of theories of control andcomputation. The BellmanAward is the highest recogni-tion of professional achieve-ment for U.S. control systemsengineers and scientists.

» Control Engineering Practice Award:To Babatunde A. Ogunnaike forpioneering the application andimplementation of model predic-tive control, nonlinear state esti-mation, nonlinear control, and

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product control to polymer andgranulation processes.

» Donald P. Eckman Award: To AsuOzdaglar for contributions tooptimization theory, game theoryand its applications to congestedmarkets, and learning in largenetworks with applications tohuman and social networks.

» The John R. Ragazzini Award: ToStephen Yurkovich for leader-ship in control educationthrough curriculum and labora-tory development, for contribu-tions in continuing education forcontrol engineers in industry,and for promotion of studentinvolvement in engineeringprofessionalism.

» O. Hugo Schuck Award for Theory(ACC 2007): To Nader Moteeand Ali Jadbabaie, “OptimalControl of Spatially DistributedSystems,” pages 778–783 in theconference proceedings.

» O. Hugo Schuck Award for Prac-tice (ACC 2007): To Lin-ShienFong and Stevan Dubljevic,“Pacing Real-Time Spatiotem-poral Control of Cardiac Alter-nans,” pages 600–606 in theconference proceedings.

EXHIBITS AND SPONSORSExhibits and Sponsors Chair WendyFoslien organized the exhibitor andsponsor booths. ACC 2008 had arecord number of sponsors, including

Bosch, Eaton, Ford, General Electric,Honeywell, Maplesoft, Mathworks,National Instruments, and UnitedTechnologies, whose financial supportis greatly appreciated. Most of thesponsors held special sessions duringthe conference. Additional exhibitorsincluded Control Engineering, dSpace,ESAIM Journal, Feedback, ISA,Quanser, PendCon, Princeton Univer-sity Press, SIAM, Springer, Taylor andFrancis, and Wiley.

LOCAL ARRANGEMENTSLocal Arrangements Chair KristiMorgansen coordinated all socialevents at the conference. These eventsincluded the welcoming and closingreceptions, breakfast for all attendees

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on all days, coffee breaks twice a day,and the Awards Ceremony, which wasfollowed by the Conference Luncheonon Thursday. Instead of an authors’breakfast, a light continental breakfastwas provided for all attendees in themorning. Free wireless service wasprovided at the conference location.The opening reception featured athree-piece ensemble headed by theBill Anshell Jazz Trio, while the closingreception, which was held in the Seat-tle Space Needle, featured GeoffreyCastle on electric guitar.

STUDENT ACTIVITIESVice Chair for Student Affairs DawnTilbury coordinated the student bestpaper award and the student travelsupport program. The Best StudentPaper Award Committee, composedof Murat Arcak of RPI, Magnus

ClosingReception


Egerstedt of Georgia Tech, andXiaobo Tan of Michigan State Univer-sity, chose the four finalists, RobertGregg from the University of Illinois,Youngsheng Ou from Lehigh Univer-sity, Goele Pipeleers from the CatholicUniversity of Leuven, and ShreyasSundaram from the University of Illi-nois. The winner of the Best StudentPaper Award was Robert Gregg. Thestudent travel support program sup-ported 70 students with more thanUS$53,000 in funds from the Ameri-can Automatic Control Council, theNational Science Foundation, theASME Dynamic Systems and ControlDivision, and the IEEE Control Sys-tem Society. In a special session onacademic job hunting, a panel gaveadvice about networking at confer-ences, what search committees arelooking for, what to include in an

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interview talk, and the timelines forthe academic search. Panel membersincluded Andrew Alleyne of the Uni-versity of Illinois, Gary Balas of theUniversity of Minnesota, DomitillaDel Vecchio of the University ofMichigan, Galip Ulsoy of the Univer-sity of Michigan, and Ardalan Vahidiof Clemson University.

THE ATTENDEESRegistration Chair Carolyn Beck man-aged the registration process. She wasassisted by Laura Crane and RebeccaLonberger, who took care of the reg-istration booth and answered numer-ous questions during the conference.There was a strong international pres-ence at the conference, with 761 atten-

dees from North America, 78 fromEurope, 93 from Asia, eight fromAustralia and New Zealand, 19 fromSouth America, 12 from the MiddleEast, and four from Africa. In addi-tion, 229 (about 22%) of the attendeeswere students.

Publications Chair NairaHovakimyan edited the final pro-gram, a book of abstracts, and theCD-ROM proceedings. PublicityChair May-Win Thein created the callfor papers, advertised the conference,and administered the Web site.Finance Chair Rajesh Rajamani han-dled receipt of the fees and paymentof expenses for the conference. Theefforts of all of these people allowedthe attendees to concentrate on the

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sessions and their presentations,making for a successful conference.

CLOSING REMARKSI would like to thank all of the atten-dees, authors, presenters, chairs,program committee members, anony-mous reviewers, PaperPlaza supportteam, student volunteers, and theoperating committee for making theACC 2008 a terrific success. I wouldlike to extend my personal thanks toour industry sponsors, Bosch, Eaton,Ford, GE, Honeywell, MathWorks,National Instruments, and UnitedTechnologies, and hope to have theircontinued participation at all futureACCs! I would also like to thank theNSF, NASA, and AFOSR for showcas-

ing funding opportunities, and grate-fully acknowledge NSF, AACC,ASME, and IEEE for providing fundsand contributions for student travel.

ACCs are totally run by volun-teers. It is through their tireless effortsthat an outstanding technical event iscreated. The work of the volunteers isappreciated by all associated withthese conferences. I also want toacknowledge the understanding andsupport given to the volunteers byspouses or significant others, families,and friends during the many hoursspent attending to conference matters.

Anuradha M. AnnaswamyGeneral Chair

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Documents

2008 Chinese Control and Decision Conferenceieeecss.org/CSM/library/2008/dec08/14-Dec2008ConferenceReport.pdf · 2008 Chinese Control and Decision Conference ... island and ancient