Featured Opening Plenary Talk and Reception

ACC 2016 is proud to present a Special Opening Lecture by Jack Little, cofounder and president of MathWorks. The lecture will be immediately followed by the Opening Reception, generously sponsored by MathWorks.

Accelerating the Pace Toward Smarter Controlled Systems
 

Jack Little, MathWorks, USA
Tuesday, July 5, 6:00pm
Location: Salon E

Thirty years ago, computer-aided control system design involved an exclusive community of engineers, typically in top research labs or large companies, running esoteric codes on timeshared minicomputers to design and analyze control algorithms, often for expensive systems produced in low volumes. Today, computer-aided control system design has grown into Model-Based Design, encompassing not only system analysis and algorithm design, but also implementation through code generation, plus verification and validation on both models and embedded code. It is used in every industry that creates today’s smart systems – aerospace, automotive, industrial automation, medical devices, robotics, energy, and many more – not only for the controls but integrating computer vision, communication, and machine learning. In this talk, Jack Little reviews the evolution of control design tools, and the corresponding changes in controls education and research. Jack then looks forward to the future of Model-Based Design and how it is addressing the next generation of control engineers: researchers and developers working on challenges such as cyber-physical systems and distributed systems, but also students and makers taking advantage of easy-to-use software with low-cost hardware – everyone building the smarter controlled systems of the future.

Jack Little is president and cofounder of MathWorks. He was a coauthor and principal architect of early versions of the company's flagship MATLAB product as well as Signal Processing Toolbox and Control System Toolbox.  Jack holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT (1978) and an M.S.E.E. degree from Stanford University (1980).  A Fellow of the IEEE and Trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, he writes and speaks about technical computing, Model-Based Design, entrepreneurship, and software industry issues.