A short overview of control in European R&D programmes (1983-2013): From local loop designs, through networked and coordinated control, to stochastic, large scale and real time optimization systems $

Abstract The main purpose of this article is to summarize the activities related to control and control systems supported by the European Commission Research and Development (R&D) programmes (so called Framework Programmes—FPs) with focus on the last two decades and to present and discuss the synergies, gaps and possible new challenges identified during several brainstorming and informal meetings and in related reports and position papers covering topics from loop performance improvements to distributed, stochastic and large scale systems of systems. A second goal is to serve as a small additional source of systems and control information, listing examples of funded projects and recommendations for future work grouped according to established control categories and the EC themes and areas in the published work programmes. This note also marks 12 years after the European Journal of Control special issue, back in 2001, which was dedicated to the results of a pioneering Verification of Hybrid Systems project (VHS) [60] . About the same time a special EC project, Awareness and Dissemination Activities for Advanced Control In Europe (ADACIE), supported three major control events i.e. IFAC in Barcelona, MED in Lisbon and ECC in Porto and Cambridge [1] . This is a collection of factual and personal reflections of the author, based on several years of following up public and industrial activities in systems and control. The qualitative interpretation of the project results and discussions presented however have to be complemented by the actual and detailed scientific and technological deliverables and papers published by the control teams involved. A small set of useful references is included. Open questions still remain and novel concepts and ideas may become part of new endeavors of the European and international communities in funded activities, or in independent work. Furthermore the reported activities also indicated that there are more unexplored synergies among these disciplines (e.g. control, computing, communications, cognition, complexity and mathematics), which would necessitate new ways of open and joint efforts.