Online Workshop: Practical Methods for Real World Control Systems, at ACC 2021, Virtual from New Orleans, May 24

The 2021 American Control Conference (ACC) scheduled for New Orleans in the last week of May has been moved online due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As such, all presentations, including this workshop will be presented online.  This is the fourth year that my friends and I are organizing a one day workshop on Practical Methods for Real World Control Systems (https://acc2021.a2c2.org/program/workshops), this year online on Monday, May 24, scheduled for 8:30-5:30 US Eastern Time. I will first describe the workshop as usual and then follow this with a brief rant/riff on why you should really try this online version of our workshop.

(15 minute intro video)

The workshop "brochure"can be found at https://dabramovitch.com/practical_methods/, including a printable PDF version and a 15-minute intro video there. The a draft of the companion material for the introduction can be found at https://dabramovitch.com/practical_methods/workshop_intro.pdf. We have a lot of material, more than last year, and won't be running out the clock with panel discussions. (For those who have been to an earlier version of the workshop, the section on noise analysis via PES Pareto was substantially expanded in 2020.) The target audience falls into three general groups:

1)    Academic researchers who are well versed in control theory but would like to learn more about issues practicing control engineers often encounter as well as techniques and methods often used outside of standard textbook solutions to enhance their students’ experience in the classroom and laboratory. 

2)    Practicing engineers who work on physical control systems and products that use control with an interest in connecting their work to “best practices” motivated by theory. 

3)    Students who may be interested in adding laboratory experiments to their research or want to know how to make what they have learned applicable in industry.

The nominal online workshop fee is a deal, $120 (down from the typical in-person cost of $225) for a full day including coffee breaks (your coffee and snacks) and materials (ours, but online which will be a link to online files including a ~600 page companion book). Student registration is absurdly cheap (a.k.a. $20).

(Register at: https://acc2021.a2c2.org/registration/.)

So, what are the advantages of the online workshop?

• Anyone can attend. In-person workshops assume you are local or attending that year's ACC. As this one is on line, anyone who wants to register can attend, independently whether they were planning to be at the online conference or within driving distance of Denver.
• It's cheaper. About half the cost at $120. Basically, it's a lot less expensive to do this stuff remotely than in a hotel, and we pass the savings on to you. (I feel like I need a checkered jacket and white shoes while saying that.) For students, it's dirt cheap. (Registration site is still going to ask that you establish that you are a student, as it always does.)
• The coffee will be a lot better. Okay, low bar, as I'm assuming that you have better coffee at home than the watered down brown water that the hotels charge the conference absurd amounts for. I've seen the budgets and it would hurt a lot less if the stuff was decent.
• The snacks will be a lot tastier and probably healthier, well unless all you have at home are snacks made with "cheeze" or something from the counter at the gas station. Note that this is a higher bar than the coffee, but if you are registered a week out and I have your email, I can send you a pretty decent chocolate chip cookie recipe.
• You were going to download this stuff anyway, so the lack of a memory stick shouldn't matter. Again, if you're registered early, you can get the link to download the printouts for your work printer.
• The travel from your bedroom to your computer is less onerous than air travel. (Of course, unless you are already in New Orleans, you'll miss out on the Cafe Du Monde and the Acme Oyster House . I'm seriously bummed about that.)
• I've cleaned up a lot of the material on how to make effective measurements and how to do noise analysis for what goes around the loop.

Thanks,

Danny Abramovitch, ACC 2016 General Chair, ACC 2013 Program Chair