China in Control

C O N F E R E N C E R E P O R T S «

DECEMBER 2006 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 117

25th Chinese Control Conference

T he Chinese Control Conference(CCC) is one of the most impor-tant annual conferences on sys-

tems and control in China. Themeeting provides a forum for schol-ars, engineers, and graduate students,both at home and from abroad, toexchange their newest research resultsand discuss their new ideas. It is alsoa convenient way for young Chineseresearchers to learn new trends anddevelopments from leading interna-tional researchers.

GENERAL INFORMATIONThe 25th CCC (CCC06) was held7–11 August 2006 at the InternationalConvention Center, Harbin, China.Harbin is a beautiful summer resortcity in northeast China, which isknown for its Russian style buildingsand ice and snow sculptures. Thepermanent organizer of the confer-ence is the Technical Committee onControl Theory (TCCT), Chinese

Association of Automation. Thisyear, the local organizer was the Cen-ter for Control Theory and GuidanceTechnology, Harbin Institute of Tech-nology (HIT). The conference wasalso cosponsored by the IEEE Con-trol System Society (CSS), the Societyof Instrument and Control Engineers(SICE), Japan, and the Institute ofControl, Automation, and SystemsEngineers (ICASE), Korea.

The Proceedings of the 25th CCCwill be included in the IEEE Confer-ence Publication Program. Thepapers included in the conferenceproceedings will be archived in IEEEXplore and indexed in the interna-tional science and technology pro-ceedings (ISTP).

TECHNICAL PROGRAMSThere were 674 submissions to thisCCC, including papers from the Unit-ed States, United Kingdom, Australia,Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Canada,Korea, Iran, Iraq, Romania, HongKong, and Taiwan. Among these sub-missions, 461 papers were acceptedand included in the conference pro-ceedings, published in a CD-ROM.There were 40 parallel lecture ses-sions (including eight invited ones)comprised of 219 papers and fourposter sessions with 102 papers. Infive of these lecture sessions, allpapers were represented in English.For convenience, these five sessionswere arranged in the same roomthroughout the conference. Papers inthe other sessions could be presentedeither in English or Chinese. Thenewly developed CCC electronicpaper submission system greatlyfacilitated the paper submission andreview process.

New to this year’s CCC, eightprogram regional chairs wereappointed, who were responsiblefor conference public i ty withintheir regions and organizing invit-ed sessions. The regional chairs areB. Chen, National University of Sin-gapore, Singapore; T.W. Chen, Uni-versity of Alberta, Canada; J .W.Choi, Pusan National University,Korea; M.Y. Fu, University of New-castle, Australia; J. Huang, ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong; G.P. Liu,University of Glamorgan, UnitedKingdom; Z. Lin, University of Vir-ginia, USA; and T.L. Shen, SophiaUniversity, Japan.

Six plenary speeches on timely top-ics were delivered:

» “Feedback Control of Decoher-ence: Systems TheoreticalApproach,” by Tzyh-JongTarn, Washington University

» “Boundary Control of PDEs andApplications to TurbulentFlows and Flexible Structures,”by Miroslov Krstic, Universityof California, San Diego

» “Efficient Data Representationsfor Signal Processing and Con-trol: `Making Most of a Little’,”by Graham Goodwin, Universi-ty of Newcastle, Australia

» “A Global-Analysis Approach toRobust Control,” by AndersLindquist, Royal Institute ofTechnology, Sweden

» “Advances in Convex Optimiza-tion,” by Stephen Boyd, StanfordUniversity

» “Multi-Agent Systems withLocal Rules: Toward a Theoryof Analysis and Control,” by LeiGuo, Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, China

In this issue of IEEE Control Systems

Magazine, we have two conference

reports, both on meetings held in China

in 2006. The 6th World Congress on

Intelligent Control and Automation was

held in Dalian, China, in June, while the

25th Chinese Control Conference was

held in Harbin, China, in August. Both

conferences reflect the high level of

interest in control and automation in

China and Asia.

I welcome conference reports on

small and large conferences held world-

wide. Please contact me at:Zongli LinE-mail: zl5y@virginia.edu

118 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2006

PRECONFERENCEWORKSHOPS ANDPRECONFERENCE SYMPOSIUMFour preconference tutorial work-shops were organized:

» “Fundamental PerformanceLimitations in Feedback Con-trol,” by Jie Chen, Universityof California; Li Qiu, HongKong University of Scienceand Technology; and WeizhouSu, South China University ofTechnology

» “Networked Embedded ControlSystems,” by Xiaoming Hu andUlf Jonsson, Royal Institute ofTechnology, Sweden

» “Pliable, Feedback, and Cooper-ative Controls of ConstrainedSystems,” by Zhihua Qu, Uni-versity of Central Florida

» “Time-delayed Feedback Con-trol: Methodology, Stability,and Application,” by YupingTian, Southeast University

As a preconference symposium, theSecond China-Japan Joint Workshopon Control of Nonsmooth, Switched,and Hybrid Systems was held on 6August 2006 at the International Con-vention Center, Harbin. The organizerswere Yu Yao of the Harbin Institute ofTechnology, China, and Tielong Shenof Sophia University, Japan.

AWARDSTwo awards were presented atCCC06, the 12th Guan Zhao-ZhiAward and the first Poster Award.The winning papers for the 12th GuanZhao-Zhi Award were

» “A Unified Treatment for Con-trollability/Observability Prob-lems of Partial DifferentialEquations of Second Order,” byXiaoyu Fu, Sichuan University

» “Optimal AD-Conversion viaSampled-Data Processing Hori-zon Control Theory,” by MilanDerpich, Daniel E. Quevedo,and Graham Goodwin, Univer-sity of Newcastle.

The Opening Ceremony of the 25th CCC.

The TCCT meeting at CCC06. First row (from left): Wei Huo, Guangren Duan, Dai-ZhanCheng, Huashu Qin, Hongxin Wu, Han-Fu Chen, Lei Guo, Zhigang Han, Fengsheng Tu,Tielong Shen, Jie Huang, Jifeng Zhang. Second row: (from left) Min Wu, Yingmin Jia,Dewen Hu, Shaoyuan Li, Wensheng Yu, Li Yu, Bugong Xu, Yuping Tian, Anke Xue,Zengqiang Chen, Gang Feng, Zhongping Jiang, Zhihong Guan, Yi Huang, Yuqiang Wu,Yueming Hu, and Xu Zhang.

Tzyh-Jong Tarn presents a plenary talk.

Miroslov Krstic presents a plenary talk.

The conference hall for the plenary speeches.

Overseas attendees (from left) Miroslav Krstic (plenary speaker),Zhongping Jiang (chair, preconference tutorial workshops),Zongli Lin (program regional chair), and Jie Huang (programregional chair).

Xiaoyu Fu and Milan Derpich receive theGuan Zhao-Zhi Award at CCC’06. Lei Guo,member of the Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, presents the awards.

Yuanming Ding and Shuping Tan receivethe Poster Award at CCC’06. Han-Fu Chen,member of Chinese Academy of Sciences,presents the awards.

Milan Derpich, winner of the 12th Guan Zhao-Zhi Award, sings at the banquet.

Guangren Duan and Graham C. Goodwin exercise ChineseWushu at the Two Dragons Mountain, east of Harbin.

DECEMBER 2006 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 119

120 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2006

T he 6th World Congress on Intel-ligent Control and Automation(WCICA2006) was held in

Dalian in northeastern China 21–23June 2006. The congress venue wasthe Dalian Shangri-La hotel. TheWCICA2006 was sponsored byDalian University of Technology,China, and Northeastern University,China, and was technically cospon-sored by the IEEE Robotics andAutomation Society; the NationalNatural Science Foundation, China;the Chinese Association of Automa-tion; and the IEEE Control SystemsSociety, Beijing Chapter. TheWCICA2006 was financially support-ed by National Natural Science Foun-dation, China, Ministry of Education,China, Shanghai Baosight SoftwareCo., Ltd., Grandar Robotics Co., Ltd.,Yokogawa Electric Corporation, K.C.Wong Education Foundation, HongKong, and Siemens Ltd., China.

The WCICA has evolved into a bi-annual event and a major internationalcontrol conference series held inChina. The previous five congresseswere successfully held in Beijing,Xi’an, Hefei, Shanghai, and Hangzhouin 1993, 1997, 2000, 2002, and 2004,respectively. The WCICA2006 aimedto provide an international forum forresearchers, engineers, and profession-als working in the areas of intelligentcontrol and automation to discuss andexchange their findings, ideas, and

views. The response to the call forpapers of the WCICA2006 was extra-ordinary. There were 5,938 submis-sions, a number much higher thanexpected. The International ProgramCommittee worked very hard and effi-ciently. After a rigorous review proce-dure, 2,224 papers (37.45%) wereincluded in the congress proceedingspublished by the IEEE. These paperscovered almost all areas of control andautomation research. The WCICA2006drew over 1,500 participants from 16countries and included academicresearchers and representation fromindustry and government. This num-ber of participants is record breakingin the history of the WCICA.

The program for this congressincluded 136 sessions of oral presenta-tions and four sessions of posters andwas organized into the followingsimultaneous tracks: 1) Control Theoryand Methods, 2) Intelligent Control, 3)Modeling and Simulation, 4) Sense andFault diagnosis, 5) Process Control andOptimization, 6) Integrated Automa-tion Systems, 7) Control System ofIndustrial Processes, and, 8) OtherApplications. In addition to the regulartechnical sessions, there were plenaryand panel discussions as well as socialactivities. Six leading experts in thefield were invited to deliver plenaryspeeches: “Control over UnreliableCommunication Links” by TamerBasar, University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign; “Innovation InitiativesToward Year 2015” by AkiraNagashima, Yokogawa Electric Corpo-ration, Japan; “The Multiscale Natureof Process Dynamics and Model-Pre-dictive Control” by George Stephan-opoulos, MIT; “Current NSF RoboticsDevelopments and Activities Focusingon Robust Intelligence” by George Lee,CISE/IIS Robotics Program, NSF;“Deterministic and Real-Time Commu-nication over Ethernet in EPA ControlSystem” by Jian Chu, Zhejiang Univer-sity, China; and “Information Inte-gration Techniques in Automation” byLiqun Cong, Shanghai Baosight Soft-ware Co. Ltd., China.

PANEL DISCUSSIONPublishing quality papers in interna-tional journals is an important processfor graduate students and scholars toadvance their career and to increasetheir role in the world arena. However,many students and scholars are facingmajor difficulties in this endeavor,and the acceptance rate for papers byChinese authors is lower than forpapers by authors from North Ameri-ca, Europe, and Japan. What are thereasons? How to overcome the hur-dles? What goes on after a paper issubmitted and how are acceptance orrejection decisions made? What willbe the roles of journals in the future?A panel discussion, “How to PublishPapers in International Journals,” was

The 6th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation

The winning papers for the firstPoster Award were

» “Adaptive Nonlinearity Compen-sation for Power AmplifiersBased on Model-MatchingApproach,” by Yuanming Ding,Dailian University, and AkiraSano, Keio University

» “Optimal Adaptive Sampled-Data Based Control of StochasticSystems with Compact Parame-ter Set,” by Shuping Tan, BeijingInstitute of Control Engineering.

TECHNICAL TOURSAND POST-CONFERENCESIGHTSEEING TOURSThe conference also organized tech-nical and sightseeing tours. Techni-cal visits included laboratories andcenters at HIT. Many participantsenjoyed a one-day city tour as wellas two-day tours to Wudalianchi(Five Large Connected Pools) andthe Jingpo Lake.

Finally, the conference programand activities can be found on the

TCCT home page: http://tcct.amss.ac.cn and the home page for the Cen-ter for Control Theory and GuidanceTechnology: http://cctgt.hit.edu.cn.The 26th CCC (CCC07) will be held inZhangjiajie, a marvelous sightseeingdestination in Hunan Province. TheWeb site for CCC07 is http://sise.csu.edu.cn/ccc07.

Guangren DuanChair, Program Committee