Conference Agenda

In recent times, advancements in network technology, mobile computation, and distributed computer architectures have had a deep impact on control and decision making and, thereby, on applications such as smart mechatronic systems. Progress in theory and methods for distributed control and optimization continues to be the key enabler to exploit these technological advancements to arrive at better systems. This minisymposium gives insight into distributed control and optimization methods that navigate the tradeoffs between efficient, resilient computation, provable theoretical properties like convergence and stability of control loops, and requirements arising from physical applications. Since most applications cannot be thought of without the physical domain, e.g., mechanics for robotic systems, the minisymposium encourages discussions between the disciplines.

The minisymposium brings together experts from the mathematical field of distributed control and optimization as well as from application-oriented research. Applications range from networks of mechanical systems such as robots to more abstract problems that can be solved by distributed optimization, e.g., the distributed solution of very large-scale decision-making problems. The minisymposium aims to facilitate a dialogue between applied mathematicians and engineers to develop a joint understanding of the chances presented by the current state of theoretical research and the challenges posed by today's and future applications. Hence, the minisymposium caters to an audience ranging from mechanics and robotics to control theory and mathematics.