Reports of Completed Activities

Activity Organizer

Cristina Stoica (CentraleSupélec/L2S, Gif-sur-Yvette cedex, France)

IFAC Sponsor: TC 9.2

Description:

The aim of this project was to propose new on-site perennial interactive workshops for children and youths to develop practical skills on mobile robots and drones, motivating them to continue their curriculum in engineering.

These Mobile Robotics workshops were initially intended to be implemented during the annual national event “Fête de la Science”, which is a large-scale science festival, created more than 30 years ago, and organized yearly by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to promote and popularize science in France. In addition, the developed resources and workshops were presented during numerous events in CentraleSupélec, Laboratory of Signals and Systems, and Paris-Saclay University.

The project had two phases:

- Phase I (Workshop on Mobile Robotics, “Fête de la Science 2022” edition and beyond): A first workshop involving the use of ground robots (DJI Master Robot S1) was proposed in October 2022 for the general public visiting the flight arena of CentraleSupélec. The scientific content of the workshop goes from Programming (in Scratch) to Robotics and Control Engineering, with specific pedagogical approaches, developed in the following three steps, see [1]:

I.1. Single robot & Single child: The first version of the workshop proposed several basic exercises in Scratch allowing each kid to control one mobile robot, i.e. single robot control by one kid.

I.2. Single robot & Multiple children: In the next stage, the workshop was adapted in order to allow one small group of children to implement elementary exercises in Scratch (e.g., tracking a specific trajectory or a specific robot) on the robot allocated to their group, i.e. single robot control by several children. Two sessions were organized for the 9-years old pupils (who already have basic notions of Scratch) of the primary school Roger Ferdinand, in Palaiseau (in the Paris Region), allowing them to work in teams of two or three kids on the same robot.

I.3. Multiple robot & Multiple children: These approaches were developed to teach children the advantages of collaborative work and to make the link with basic notions of Multi-Agent Systems, e.g., implementing basic leader-follower/platooning concepts with five robots, drawing the IFAC logo via light painting with one or several robots. Indeed, each group of children programmed a specific task on one robot. Putting together the work of all the groups led to a much elaborated result (see video example https://youtu.be/3UXQVUPvKN4).

Part of the developed pedagogical material is available on https://github.com/L2S-lab/ReCreative_Robot_ICSTCC2023.

- Phase II (Workshop involving both ground and aerial vehicles, “Fête de la Science 2023” edition and beyond): A second workshop was proposed for the 2023 edition of this science festival, in the flight arena of CentraleSupélec. For this event, a new pedagogical game was developed: the classic Atari Pong game was adapted to a real-world setup with two mobile ground robots acting as paddles and one drone as ball. A repository containing the open-source code is available at https://github.com/L2S-lab/dropong. A video illustrating the different stages of the DroPong development (2D case with three ground robots, 3D case with two ground robots and one drone, both in simulation and experimentation) is provided at https://youtu.be/whsnMcFf8ZQ. The workshop timeline, together with feedback from participants and lessons learned are provided in [2].

In addition, all these activities were proposed for children (approx. 350 children and youths) and general public visiting CentraleSupélec, Laboratory of Signals and Systems, and Paris-Saclay University at numerous occasions, e.g.:

- several 15-16 years old children during their 1-week or 2-week internships at CentraleSupélec,

- numerous visits for secondary and high-school learners organized by the Center of Diversity and Inclusion of CentraleSupélec,

- one visit for children with disabilities organized by TREMPLIN Handicap, Nov 2023,

- the traditional Closing day OSER (“Journée de Clôture OSER”), May 2023 & Mai 2024, organized by the CentraleSupélec students’ association OSER, committed to equal opportunity, inclusion and diversity,

- CentraleSupélec Quinquennial 2023 and 2024 involving alumni participants and their families.

The developed workshops were also presented during several local events (e.g., annual Pedagogical Days “Journée pédagogique de l’Université Paris-Saclay” 2023) and conferences (27th International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing 2023, European Control Conference 2024, meeting of the TC 9.2 during the IFAC World Congress 2023).

Current work focuses on the update to ROS2 of the flight arena allowing us to use all the ground robots and drones at the same time, to offer more impressive Mobile Robotics experimentations.

Publications:

[1] C. Stoica, S. Bertrand, A. Thakker, T. Chevet, J. Gombert, Y. Ngnie-Tekou, J. Godoy, J. Bourgeois, "(Re)CreativeRobot: Popularizing Workshop to Promote Control and Mobile Robotics for Kids", 27th International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing, Timisoara, Romania, 2023, available on https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10308506 and https://hal.science/hal-04261238

[2] S. Bertrand, C. Stoica, A. Thakker, C. Croon, A. Hanne, C. Hosxe, S. Kretz, A. Mol, A. Philippe, "DroPong: Enthusing Learners about Control Engineering by Revisiting the Pong Game with Aerial and Ground Drones", European Control Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, 2024, available on https://hal.science/hal-04646583

Activity Organizer

Steffi Knorn (Technical University of Berlin, Germany)

IFAC Sponsor: TC 9.4

Description:

Despite its great importance for virtually all fields of industry and manufacturing, control engineering and its underlying principles are unknown to the vast majority of people in the general public. While related fields like big data, machine learning, communications and artificial intelligence are emerging and experiencing a media hype, control is seldom mentioned - let alone its governing principles explained. But, in order to understand emerging technologies, which include an increasing amount of control, people must at least develop a general understanding of the principles and basic concepts in control.

Storyline:

• During a holiday the group of participants visit an observatory and as they walk through the hallways they hear a professor call for help. The professor explains that they are being hacked and need the participants help to retrieve a reset code from a safe in their home. However, as the professor needs to continue to defend the attack, the instructions given to the participants are brief and incomplete, the professor is, however, very clear that the reset code is needed within one hour!
• As the observatory is situated in an isolated area and on a high altitude, the first puzzle needing to be solved is to fly a helicopter from the observatory to the base station. Unfortunately, the hackers have compromised the helicopter and the pilot is unable to see neither position nor velocity from the pilot's seat, i.e., one participant needs to act as a feedback coupling to the pilot. As the vehicle lands in the correct location, the system equation is revealed.
• From the base station, the participants must use a self-driving vehicle to take them back to the city. As the vehicle is being developed by the professor themselves, it is not yet complete. First, the participants need to verify the programmed trajectory, by solving a given system. As the participants realize that the planned trajectory is unstable, they need to find a suitable controller to alter the trajectory. Through the designed controller, the vehicle stops and reveals the next address.
• As the vehicle enters the city, the participants encounter a traffic zone in which no autonomous driving is allowed. Therefore, the participants need to find the destination by backtracking a recording of the last trip, i.e., the participants receive the input to the vehicle and will act as an observer in order to find the initial state.
• Finally, the participants arrive at the street of the professor. They realise that they don't know the street number of the particular house and try to contact the professor in order to get some directions. The professor replies that the participants will find the house if they walk for two minutes with a specific speed and then hangs up the telephone before more specific information can be given.
• As they finally enter the house, the participants notice that the children of the professor have been home alone for some time and created a number of riddles that the participants must solve in order to get to the safe.
• First, the participants have to mimic the buzzing sound of the door opener by combining different pure sinusoidal sound waves in the correct way to open the front door. In order to get past a second door, to enter the professor's office, they need to retrieve an RFID-token from a key box, designed as a levitating magnet. To be able to reach the token, the participants need to find the correct PID-controller-parameters to make the token levitate at the desired height.
• As the participants enter the office, they realize that they need a solution to carry the token on their head and hence have to choose a suitable hat. With their hands free, the participants can now solve the next puzzle by recreating a signal hidden within a wooden box. Finally, the participants need to solve the code for the safe. This is done by solving a regression problem.

Puzzles included:

The list below gives an overview of the included concepts and some information about the associated puzzles in CTRL+ESC. After solving a puzzle, a respective code is provided and the accumulation of these codes can be entered sequentially into the final treasure chest to reveal the reset code for the Professor, marking the completion of the escape room.

• control loop: the terms denoting standard parts of a control loop have to be connected (via cables) to the correct node of the control loop
• feedback: one participant acts as the feedback of the position to another participant, whom controls a helicopter by a joystick
• dynamic systems: the trajectory in a 2D-grid has to be found for a given system equation to track the movement of an object
• stability: relating a selection of hats with different shapes (concave, convex, flat) to allow one to balance an object on the hat
• observer: find the initial state (location) of a system through the use of a known endpoint and recorded inputs
• frequency analysis: a sound made out of single-frequency tones has to be rebuilt by choosing appropriate amplitudes of the frequency components
• sampling: feeling a curve in a dark box by hand and rebuilding it by placing loose pins of different heights in the appropriate order
• aliasing: finding the walking speed along a street of a person looking to the side periodically & making conclusions about all houses

Deployment:

The puzzles were transported to HAW Hamburg for ACE2022 in order to give conference participants and local students a chance to play the room and hence experience the room. A total of 9 groups took the opportunity, most completed the puzzles but many also needed assistance and help to solve some of the puzzles. Overall, the reception was very positive with some criticism due to language difficulties (non-native speakers expressed some difficulties understanding the English texts).

Several colleagues expressed interest in extending the puzzles and establishing similar escape rooms at their local institutions.

All equipment was transported back to Berlin after ACE in Hamburg and then set up at a dedicated room belonging to the control group of the applicant at TU Berlin. During the autumn/winter semester 2022/23 (starting in October 2022), students taking the control course will be invited to solve/play CTRL+ESC in order to enhance their interest in control and increase their self-efficacy.

However, in order to fully establish the room and open it to the general public, additional funds must be acquired as legal constraints prevent us from employing student assistants to look after CTRL+ESC.

Activity Organizers

Elena PANTELEY / Antoine GIRARD (Laboratory of Signals and Systems, CNRS, University Paris Saclay, Centrale Supélec, France)

IFAC Sponsor: TC 9.4

Description

The European Embedded Control Institute (EECI), was founded in 2006 in the framework of the HYCON Network of Excellence (FP6-IST-511368). It is an independent "lightweight" non-profitable association (under the French Association Law 1901) with its headquarters in the campus of CentraleSupélec, Paris-Saclay University.

The main activity of the EECI is the yearly organization of the International Graduate School on Control (IGSC), which consists of a series of independent modules on various topics in automatic control, one 21-hours module per week during the spring semester. These modules are eligible for 2nd-year master and doctoral degree credits. Completion of a module gives the equivalence of 3 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System). The IGSC has been technically co-sponsored by IFAC, since 2017 and by IEEE CSS, since 2019. Some courses are taught in the EECI headquarters at CentraleSupélec, and others are taught in Europe or elsewhere. The complete list of previous locations of the IGSC courses can be found at http://www.eeci-igsc.eu/venues/.

IGSC invites the best experts to teach recognized top current subjects in automatic control and related areas in renowned universities and institutes worldwide. A new program is proposed each year. The description of all modules with the summaries of the courses are available on the website http://www.eeci-igsc.eu/. The teachers receive a net salary of 100€ /h; travel expenses and six nights in the hotel are covered.

The aim of the IGSC is to complete the training of students from around the world in the multidisciplinary field of Systems & Control. EECI offers a complementary and essential education for PhD students, post-docs, young (or less young) researchers, and engineers. IGSC now brings about 400 PhD students each year from all over the world. In addition to the training aspect, students, mostly PhD students, have the possibility to establish collaborations with local research teams and with the visiting professor during their stay of one or more weeks.

Activity Organizer

John Ringwood (Director, Centre for Ocean Energy Research, Maynooth University, Ireland)

IFAC Sponsor: Ireland NMO

Description

Supervised by Centre for Ocean Energy Research at Maynooth University director Prof. John Ringwood, a mechanical engineering master’s student was recruited to design and construct an interactive wave energy demonstration tank to show the importance of control in the efficient conversion of wave energy, while highlighting the benefits of renewable sources of energy to diverse audiences, including non-technical public and other technical disciplines.

The interactive rig can be operated by the ‘audience’ – in particular to ‘tune’ the energy maximizing controller.  The system includes a new purpose-built demonstration tank with wavemaker and beach (for wave cancellation), a small-scale wave energy converter (WEC) and an electronic control system to optimize the WEC motion for power capture.

The audience will see a power output display, showing the effect of various control tunings.  The rig will demonstrate, more than the accompanying presentations and posters, the potential for wave power and the necessity, within wave systems, of control to maximise power output. The rig, accompanied by videos, presentations, and posters, will be used for public engagement and dissemination activities. The demonstration system will also be used at national (and where practical, international) conferences, such as the Irish Signals and Systems Conference to demonstrate the potential, and importance of control in making wave (and renewable energy, in general) economic. The intern will gain substantial knowledge and experience of control from a wave energy perspective – potentially leading to further studies in control and creating a future member of the control community. 

There is clear scientific consensus that we need to transform our energy systems to reduce Green House Gas emissions and play our part in limiting global warming to a 1.5°C increase. Ireland’s climate action plan includes an increase in renewables to 70% of our energy needs by 2030. Climate change is cited among young people as one of their most pressing concerns[1]. Wave energy has the potential to service nearly twice Ireland’s peak energy demands [2]. Moreover, control technology can double the energy taken from Wave Energy Converters (WECs)[3], making wave energy an ideal platform to demonstrate the necessity for control. The project combines a subject of significant interest to young people and that is of international importance, aligned with an area that can clearly demonstrate the necessity of control.

[1] Youth Climate Justice Survey 2020, Spunout.

[2] Offshore Renewable Energy Plan, Govt. of Ireland

[3] Ringwood, J.V., Bacelli, G. and Fusco, F. Energy maximising control of wave energy converters, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol.34, No.5, Oct. 2014, pp 30-55. [PDF]

Side view of tank, wave energy device (purple) and control electronics

Plan view of tank, from wavemaker end

Activity Organiser

Paulo Moura Oliveira (University of Trás-os-montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal)

Description

The best way to motivate students to enroll in control engineering is by showing and demonstrating that simple practical experiments may be easily accomplished using portable pocket-size laboratories. Portable kits based in Arduino and Raspberry Pi can be both used within presential classes by students and lecturers as well as at home. This portable feature has proved yet more important due to the Covid-19 pandemic times. An excellent example of a pocket-sized Arduino is called Temperature Control Laboratory (TCLab) [1]. This activity consisted (mostly) in demonstrating the TCLab kit to easily conduct simple practical temperature control experiments.

This project overall objectives are twofold:

1. to promote automatic control as transversal scientific area to engineering courses
2. to motivate secondary school students to pursuit their university studies with control engineering courses.

This activity was organized under the auspices of the Portuguese Association for Automatic Control (APCA) and executed during from January 2021 to the end of June 2021. The activity involved organizing:

1. a workshop for secondary school teachers lecturing in engineering areas related to control engineering.
2. demonstration sessions in secondary schools for both students and teachers. These sessions were initially planned to take place in selected schools and Universities in Portugal.

By introducing the TCLab and demonstrating how does it works. Due to the SARS-CoV 2 confinement in place in Portugal at the time of the project execution, it was not possible to organize an in-class workshop for teachers. Thus, the workshop was organized on-line, as a Webinar, on the 14th of May 2021 between 17h-18h. The overall workshop aim was to motivate teachers to include TCLab experiments in their classes. A call for this workshop participation was sent to a list of teachers working in secondary/professional schools. A TCLab kit was offered to each teacher which participated in the Workshop and a hands-on tutorial was provided afterwards, allowing them to test both the hardware and basic programs to control TClab transistors temperature. Showing where to find a repository of useful information, freely available, so they can support their own control experiences with TCLab. As some registered teachers could not attend the Webinar due to overlapped professional duties, the presentation was made available in YouTube in [2,3].

If teachers were successfully motivated in workshops, demonstration sessions can be organized in target secondary schools, with appropriate curricular units. These sessions objectives are: i) showing why feedback control systems are crucial by presenting motivating application examples ii) performing a TCLab hands-on demo. How? Provide a set of TCLab kits in each school and show students how to learn by playing with it. Three visits were performed to the following Portuguese schools:

• Escola Secundária de Monserrate located in the city of Viana do Castelo. This visit took place on the 29th of April, 2021.
• Escola Secundária de Avelar Brotero located in the city of Coimbra. This visit took place on the 4th of May, 2021.
• Escola Secundária do Fundão located in the city of Fundão. This visit took place on the 20th of May, 2021.

[1] Hedengren J. D. (2019), Temperature Control Lab Kit, https://apmonitor.com/heat.htm
[2] YouTube Webinar Presentation (In Portuguese): https://youtu.be/7uOEUtbSzAs
[3] YouTube Webinar Presentation (English version in): https://youtu.be/R8gOPLlYszg

Organiser

S. Joe Qin (School of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Description

The workshop series intends to promote the importance and prevailing trend of data science, AI and control systems, in the angles of different expertise and prestigious scholars from different continents. It is also the HKIDS’s mission and vision to further promote data science and its related discipline so as to build a global network.

Owing to the travel restriction under the pandemic situation, the workshop series was conducted through ZOOM Video conferencing. The workshop series is open to public worldwide and free admission. Participants from local and different continents like Europe, South America, Asia and Africa attended the series, some are the faculty and students academic institutes, some are the practitioners of data science in industries. A key outcome of the workshop series is to bring control theory and principles into the context of machine learning towards Industry 4.0.

This workshop series is to be given by world-renowned scholars and industrial leaders in the intersection of control systems theory and data analytics. It has 3 modules; each module is with difference technology focus area. During the module, each invited speaker would give a speech in 30-35 minutes, then there would be a 30-minute panel discussion session for the host to interact with speakers, also questions raised by the participants from the public chatroom would be selected and discussed during the panel discussion. To promote the series, an event website (https://www.cityu.edu.hk/sdsc_web/IFAC2021/) has been built to upload the event information and allow the interested parties to register the event through the website. Also the series was also advertised through posters in campus, email database of IFAC, CityU, as well as public promotion through Facebook page and Google Display Network. For all the 3 modules of the workshop series, they were recorded and made available at Youtube at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc4VlSQ5hBtmh9FCqHZqp0A/videos ,such that, for those who missed the previous module of the series can watch the video to review the series.

Here are the recaps of the 3 modules being held:

Module 1 (Data Science and Automatic Control Systems)

The 1st Module of IFAC Workshop Series on “Control Systems and Data Science Towards Industry 4.0” was successfully held on 19 Mar, 2021 from 8:00pm – 10:30pm (HKT) via Zoom video conferencing. It is privileged to have renowned scholars and industrial leaders to co‐host the workshop in three different time zones, Prof Jie CHEN of CityU chaired the module and moderated the Panel discussions.

Invited speakers and panelists include Prof S. Joe QIN from the City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) presenting at the topic of “Predictive Analytics in Industrial IoT, Data, and Systems”; Prof Rolf FINDEISEN from the Ottovon‐Guericke‐University Magdeburg (Germany) presented at the topic of “Entangling Control and Machine Learning via Predictive Control - How to Achieve Flexibility and Safety” and Dr Hong ZHAO from the

Aspen Technology (United States) gave his speech on “An Industry Perspective on AI, Machine Learning and Data Science towards Industry 4.0”.

The event gained great enthusiasm and attracted more than 240 participants all

over the world

Module 2 (Chemical and Biological Engineering Systems)

The Module 2 of IFAC Workshop Series focused on Chemical Systems and

was successfully held on 21 May, 2021 from 9:00am – 11:30am (HKT) via Zoom video conferencing. Prof Li QIU of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology chaired the module and moderated the Panel discussions.

Invited speakers and panelists include world renowned scholars, including

Prof Richard D. Braatz from MIT (U.S.A.) presented at the topic of “Pharma 4.0: Advanced Manufacturing of (Bio)Pharmaceutical Products”, Prof Furong Gao from the Hong

Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong) gave his speech on “Batch Process Automation”,and Prof Jay H. Lee from KAIST (Korea) presented “Reinforcement Learning vs MPC – Alternative or Complementary?”

The Module II was actively participated by nearly 100 attendees from the world.

Module 3 (Electrical and Computer Engineering Systems)

The Module 3 of IFAC Workshop Series focused on Electronic and Computer Engineering Systems and was successfully held today on 9 July 2021 from 8:00pm – 10:30pm (HKT) via Zoom video conferencing. Prof S Joe Qin of the City University of Hong Kong chaired module and moderated the Panel discussions

Prof Li QIU of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology gave a talk on Renaissance of Phase, which is eye‐opening on develop a phase theory on MIMO dynamic systems with or without feedback. The phase concept complements the concept of magnitude of a complex quantity. Prof Zhong‐ping JIANG of the New York University talked about Small‐Gain and Machine Learning Techniques for Autonomous Driving, which built a way to analyze stability of machine learning systems and applied to autonomous driving. Prof. Jie Chen of the City University of Hong Kong gave another interesting talk on Revisiting PID, which illustrated how low computing can achieve significant intelligence by exploring the PID control mechanism.

Organiser

Simone Formentin

Description

Development of an open web-platform (https://faceit.pythonanywhere.com/) that has the following features:

• Teachers-oriented features (aiming at helping to share assessment material with colleagues around the world):
  • Users can upload their own exams and questions (so far, only in .tex format) into the portal;
  • Users may also categorize these questions based on their type (e.g., multiple choice, numeric, open), which topics are addressed (i.e., their content units), and which public accessibility they will have (e.g., ‘only my students’, ‘everybody’, etc.);
  • Users may then search questions that are publicly accessible via the platform using suitable filters (e.g., question type and content units);
  • Users may then visualize the questions directly in the portal, select the ones they prefer, and download them in a .tex format;
• Students-oriented features (aiming at making it possible for students to visualize their estimated knowledge status):
  • Registered users can select some available questions (either graphically or filtering them by Question Type, Course, Institution, Content Units, etc.) and answer them directly in the portal;
  • These answers are then stored and processed into an individualized estimated knowledge status defined over a teachers-defined contents unit logical relations graph;
  • These estimates can then be visualized on top of these concepts maps, so that the users can keep track of their progresses (and the teachers can retrieve information regarding the knowledge of the whole class);
• Automatic control community-oriented features:
  • Every user can create a personalized graph of how the topics within automatic control are logically connected (a feature that is intended to be used in a ‘per-course’ fashion). The resulting graphs can be then used as the state for graphically superposing the estimated knowledge status of the student in relation to the course by displaying the graph nodes (typically representing a course topic, e.g., Rational Transfer Functions, Nyquist Diagram, etc.) with different colors.

As proposed in section 5 of the initial application, the Control Conference Africa 2021  (CCA2021) took place on the 7^th and 8^th of December in Muldersdrift, South Africa and virtually all around the world.  Professor Eric Kerrigan served as IPC  chair and the co-chair was  Dr Derik le Roux.  The editor was Dr Murray Bwalya, and the IPC Vice-chair for industry was Dr Loujtie Coetzee from Mintek.  The NOC was chaired by Dr Kevin Brooks, ably assisted by co-chairs Professor Sayed Hassen and Professor Steven Bradshaw of Stellenbosch University. The Vice-chair from Industry was Dr Laurentz Olivier, Dr Lidia Auret and Mr Anshu Murdan managed communications and hybrid arrangements.

The kind support from the IFAC Activity Fund allowed the organisers to offer six sponsorships, three to academics and three to students.  Eight applications were received and the sponsorships were awarded to the six authors whose papers were accepted on the recommendation of the associate editors.  SACAC waived the registration fees for these authors.  One condition of the sponsorship was that the author should present their paper in person.

The total registration for the conference was 49 people, with 33 being for physical attendance and 16 virtual attendees.  With exquisitely bad timing the Omicron variant was first reported in South Africa on the 24^th of November.  The organisers had no choice but to allow delegates to modify their registration from physical to virtual.  Unfortunately, 5 of the 6 sponsorship recipients chose to do so.

The organisers had put plans in place for this situation and, using a popular modern term, pivoted their efforts into ensuring that the best possible hybrid event was delivered. All authors and plenary speakers had been requested to provide a video of their presentation, and the decision was made that all virtual presentations would consist of a broadcast of the recording, to avoid any bandwidth issues.  Despite this, authors were encouraged to be at the session in which their paper was presented, and all Q&A was conducted in person.  In this way, the conference retained the aspect of “confer” which is a vital part of such an event.

https://sacac.org.za/

Contact: Prof. Charlotta Johnsson, Dept of Automatic Control, Lund University, Sweden, charlotta.johnsson@control.lth.se

Website: https://www.control.lth.se/external-engagement/visits-and-outreach-activities/historical-female-influencers-in-automatic-control/

A role model is a person who serves as an example by influencing others, and inspiring others to imitate his or her behavior. When we are young and grow up, the role model is usually an elder person, someone who we admire. Often it is a parent, a teacher, a sibling or an elder friend who is that person that we look up to and, intentionally or unintentionally, get inspiration from. As we grow older, and start to shape our working-life, it becomes important to have professional role models, people that we can identify ourselves with, people that demonstrate, in a good way, how our working life could be. Having them pushes us to make the most out of our working life.

It is interesting to look at the presence of role models in the control community. The elder professionals in this field, influences the younger, and thereby shape the younger generation.

There are many occasions where younger, potential future control professionals, could be influenced by elder professionals. One occasion is in the class room when examples of pioneers in the field are highlighted. Another example is in the everyday working environment (e.g., laboratories or offices), where histories and anecdotes from the past are shared. Yet another example are the award winners in the field, who just by getting the prize raise their influence in the field.

In the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University, Sweden (for example) only 11 out of the 128 Ph.D. theses, throughout its 60 years of history, are written by women. Statistics also show that only 14% of the PhD-students and 9% of the professors are of female gender. These numbers are very low. Most probably the statistics from control department in other corners of the world, are very similar. Could it be that female role models are missing? It is noted that early pioneers that are highlighted in basic control courses often (always? ) are men--Bode, Nyquist, Kalman, etc. Also, award winners are to a very large degree men, for example the Richard E Bellman Award was given to a man 40 years in a row. This has an explanation in the fact that there are few women in the field, but how could they enter if there are hardly any role models to identify with?

The intention in this project is to find out if there are some early female historical influencers? We believe that the best way to find out would be to identify a set of elder (retired or emeritus) female professionals, and by interviewing them get to know if they had any female role models? We also believe that the identified (retired or emeritus) female control professionals, act as role models in themselves. The interviews with the identified (retired of emeritus) female control professionals will serve as material for a portrait-series of historical female influencers. The portrait-series of these women could be used in various outreach material such as lecture notes and inspirational material for young and potential future control professionals. The interviews will also serve as input material to an academic paper to be submitted to a suitable control journal.

The primary purpose is to produce material that highlights historical female control pioneers (i.e., early role-models). The general thought is that everyone in the field will benefit from a more gender-equal field. The field cannot reach its full potential while a big portion of the potential contributors are not finding their way into the field. Therefore, the material will be of importance to the field in itself. However, the material will find an additional purpose amongst young, female, and promising potential candidates, who today have difficulty in finding anyone to identify with.

Eveline Gottzein

Sirkka-Liisa Jamsa-Jounela