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IFAC reports on the 7th congress, Helsinki, Finland, 1978
0005 1098/79/0301 0361 $02.00/0
Automatica, Vol. 15, pp. 361 378 Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain © The International Federation of AutomaticControl
IFAC REPORTS ON THE 7TH CONGRESS, HELSINKI, FINLAND, 1978 sessitm. Net'ertheless, all hat~e been inchtded to proride a more complete perspective provided by diJJerent viewpoints. In./act, it is interesting to note that some of the comments are quite conflicting. Therefore, very little editing has been done except to eliminate a few redundant introductory remarks about the location and attendance at the Congress. Of course, if anyone wishes to submit comments about these reports, the Congres.s or any particular session not included here, then two copies t?l the comments should be sent to the Editor or to an Associate Editor for publication in Automatica. Finally, a complete list of the preprint papers, also to be included in the 1978 Congress Proceedings, are listed at the conclusion of these reports. The Proceedings, with additional reports and information, may be ordered from Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 0BW, England.
The following reports on various sessions and impressions of the I F A C Congress were prepared and submitted independently by several Automatica Associate Editors and session chairmen. Actually all associate editors who attended the Congress were invited to submit a report, but not all of them responded. Although it was expected that more reports would be submitted, it was decided not to wait for them and thus further delay publication of the submitted reports. It may be noted that all of the sessions at the Congress have not been included in these reports. In fact, complete coverage would be difficult to achieve, but with the experience gained .from the submission of these 1978 reports, it should be possible to make more definite assignments for more specific reports at the next Congress to be held in Kyoto, Japan during 1981. As might be expected, the reports are not written uniformly with respect to style, content, or detail since they were written individually. A f e w of the reports are short, overall impressions Of the Congress; others include brief descriptions of the technical contribution of each paper given in a particular
G. S. AXELB't Editor
Northern Lights
The 7th Triennial World Congress of IFAC Helsinki, Finland, 12-16 June 1978 These sessions were each of 2 h duration, the number of papers varying between 3 and 8 (average 5). There were 60 technical sessions, 5 case studies and 15 round table discussions: a number of informal discussions were also organized. Impressions of a few of these sessions are given below and others from other Associate Editors follow. The social programme of the Congress included a "gettogether" party, a civic reception in the Helsinki City Hall and a "Finnish evening" at the Hotel Kalastajatorppa. In addition there was an extensive programme of technical and sightseeing excursions of both a full-day and a half-day nature.
THE 7TH Triennial World Congress of IFAC was opened by President Kekkonen of Finland on Monday, 12 June 1978 in Helsinki's Finlandia Hall. The Congress was presided over by IFAC's President Uolevi Luoto of Finland and was attended by over 1000 delegates from 32 countries. The Finnish Organizing Committee under Mr. A. Hakala and the International P r o g r a m m e Committee under Professor Antti Niemi are to be congratulated on a well organized Congress with an excellent programme. The work involved can be judged by the size of the preprints which consisted of four volumes, 318 papers and 2459 pages, edited by Professor Niemi with the assistance of B. Wahlstr6m and J. Virkkunen.* The working sessions of the Congress were held in the Main Building of the Helsinki University of Technology, Otaniemi, some 10km from the centre of the city, in a pleasant campus surrounded by lakes and woods. M a n y delegates stayed in the university's student residences which are turned into a " s u m m e r hotel". There were four invited 4 5 m i n survey lectures which started each day's work of the Congress. These were: "New trends in the application of process computers" by Mr. D. Ernst (F.R.G.), " H u m a n dynamics in man-machine systems" by Dr. D. McRuer (U.S.A.), "Automatic control and artificial intelligence" by Prof. T. V~imos (Hungary), "Advances and open problems on the control of large scale systems" by Prof. M. Athans (U.S.A.). The Congress then split into a number of parallel sessions, with sometimes as m a n y as seven being held simultaneously.
R T I . Round Table on "The N e x t Decade of Control Theory and Applications" The panel members were D. P. Atherton (Canada, Chairman), E. J. Davison (Canada), K. J. A.str6m (Sweden), M. Athans (U.S.A.), N. M u n r o (U.K.) and T. J. Williams (U.S.A.). The panellists first made a statement of their own and there followed a general discussion. Chairman Atherton emphasised discrete and hierarchical systems and said that a Canadian Research Council survey had indicated the growing importance of better transducers and of economic returns from using them. Davison was more pessimistic since he felt much existing control theory literature was ignored in practice in the design of the Canadian C A N D U reactor for example. /~str6m felt that there had been considerable progress in identification theory and practice in the last two years supported by new hardware. He claimed that substantial new ideas were afoot in large scale and hierarchical system theory and that theory could give designers new degrees of freedom, with economic benefits as well. Knowledge was most effectively diffused by new graduates. Athans emphasised the important advances in frequency analysis of multivariable systems and cited three applications:
*Published by P e r g a m o n Press Ltd, Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 0BW, England. 361
Automatica, Vol. 15, pp. 361 378 Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain © The International Federation of AutomaticControl
IFAC REPORTS ON THE 7TH CONGRESS, HELSINKI, FINLAND, 1978 sessitm. Net'ertheless, all hat~e been inchtded to proride a more complete perspective provided by diJJerent viewpoints. In./act, it is interesting to note that some of the comments are quite conflicting. Therefore, very little editing has been done except to eliminate a few redundant introductory remarks about the location and attendance at the Congress. Of course, if anyone wishes to submit comments about these reports, the Congres.s or any particular session not included here, then two copies t?l the comments should be sent to the Editor or to an Associate Editor for publication in Automatica. Finally, a complete list of the preprint papers, also to be included in the 1978 Congress Proceedings, are listed at the conclusion of these reports. The Proceedings, with additional reports and information, may be ordered from Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 0BW, England.
The following reports on various sessions and impressions of the I F A C Congress were prepared and submitted independently by several Automatica Associate Editors and session chairmen. Actually all associate editors who attended the Congress were invited to submit a report, but not all of them responded. Although it was expected that more reports would be submitted, it was decided not to wait for them and thus further delay publication of the submitted reports. It may be noted that all of the sessions at the Congress have not been included in these reports. In fact, complete coverage would be difficult to achieve, but with the experience gained .from the submission of these 1978 reports, it should be possible to make more definite assignments for more specific reports at the next Congress to be held in Kyoto, Japan during 1981. As might be expected, the reports are not written uniformly with respect to style, content, or detail since they were written individually. A f e w of the reports are short, overall impressions Of the Congress; others include brief descriptions of the technical contribution of each paper given in a particular
G. S. AXELB't Editor
Northern Lights
The 7th Triennial World Congress of IFAC Helsinki, Finland, 12-16 June 1978 These sessions were each of 2 h duration, the number of papers varying between 3 and 8 (average 5). There were 60 technical sessions, 5 case studies and 15 round table discussions: a number of informal discussions were also organized. Impressions of a few of these sessions are given below and others from other Associate Editors follow. The social programme of the Congress included a "gettogether" party, a civic reception in the Helsinki City Hall and a "Finnish evening" at the Hotel Kalastajatorppa. In addition there was an extensive programme of technical and sightseeing excursions of both a full-day and a half-day nature.
THE 7TH Triennial World Congress of IFAC was opened by President Kekkonen of Finland on Monday, 12 June 1978 in Helsinki's Finlandia Hall. The Congress was presided over by IFAC's President Uolevi Luoto of Finland and was attended by over 1000 delegates from 32 countries. The Finnish Organizing Committee under Mr. A. Hakala and the International P r o g r a m m e Committee under Professor Antti Niemi are to be congratulated on a well organized Congress with an excellent programme. The work involved can be judged by the size of the preprints which consisted of four volumes, 318 papers and 2459 pages, edited by Professor Niemi with the assistance of B. Wahlstr6m and J. Virkkunen.* The working sessions of the Congress were held in the Main Building of the Helsinki University of Technology, Otaniemi, some 10km from the centre of the city, in a pleasant campus surrounded by lakes and woods. M a n y delegates stayed in the university's student residences which are turned into a " s u m m e r hotel". There were four invited 4 5 m i n survey lectures which started each day's work of the Congress. These were: "New trends in the application of process computers" by Mr. D. Ernst (F.R.G.), " H u m a n dynamics in man-machine systems" by Dr. D. McRuer (U.S.A.), "Automatic control and artificial intelligence" by Prof. T. V~imos (Hungary), "Advances and open problems on the control of large scale systems" by Prof. M. Athans (U.S.A.). The Congress then split into a number of parallel sessions, with sometimes as m a n y as seven being held simultaneously.
R T I . Round Table on "The N e x t Decade of Control Theory and Applications" The panel members were D. P. Atherton (Canada, Chairman), E. J. Davison (Canada), K. J. A.str6m (Sweden), M. Athans (U.S.A.), N. M u n r o (U.K.) and T. J. Williams (U.S.A.). The panellists first made a statement of their own and there followed a general discussion. Chairman Atherton emphasised discrete and hierarchical systems and said that a Canadian Research Council survey had indicated the growing importance of better transducers and of economic returns from using them. Davison was more pessimistic since he felt much existing control theory literature was ignored in practice in the design of the Canadian C A N D U reactor for example. /~str6m felt that there had been considerable progress in identification theory and practice in the last two years supported by new hardware. He claimed that substantial new ideas were afoot in large scale and hierarchical system theory and that theory could give designers new degrees of freedom, with economic benefits as well. Knowledge was most effectively diffused by new graduates. Athans emphasised the important advances in frequency analysis of multivariable systems and cited three applications:
*Published by P e r g a m o n Press Ltd, Headington Hill Hall, Oxford OX3 0BW, England. 361