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American Control Conference 2013

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hile the American Control Conference (ACC) and its predecessor (the Joint Automatic Cont rol Con fere nce) h ave be e n held in most of the larger cities in the United States, in Montreal, as well as in Alexandria, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland, near the U.S. capital city, the ACC has never actually been held inside the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., until this year. The 2013 ACC took place June 17–19 at the Renaissance Washington, D.C., Downtown Hotel. The conference featured several innovations and set a record for the number of ACC registrants. Attendees enjoyed the city and the numerous museums and monuments within walking distance of the conference hotel. The ACC is the annual conference of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC, www.a2c2.org), the U.S. national member organization of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). AACC is an association of the control-related groups of eight member societies: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), IEEE, International Society of Automation (ISA), Society for Modeling and Simulation International, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). ACC 2013 featured a strong program of regular, invited, and tutorial

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2013.2279489 Date of publication: 14 November 2013

sessions; preconference workshops (held on June 15 and 16); special sessions over the lunch break; and an enormously popular evening banquet at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall. Other highlights of the conference included the following. »» A plenary lecture given by Maarten Steinbuch, and four semiplenary lectures presented by Xi-Ren Cao, Paul Torcellini, Markus Fromherz, and Jason Marden. »» The first public lecture at an ACC, where David Mindell delivered a talk with a broad perspective on automation, robotics, and technology and how we humans interact with these technologies. The lecture drew not only conference attendees but also members of the general public. »» Twelve workshops, of half-, full-, and day-and-a-half durations. Workshop-only registration was also offered.

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»» Two student workshops, one on fostering excellence in robotics and another on the beauty of controls, were offered to local area high-school students. For the first time for such workshops at ACCs, these workshops were open and advertised to middle and high school-aged children of ACC 2013 attendees. »» A record 12 tutorial sessions on topics ranging from identification of nonlinear parametervarying systems and modern power systems to phase-locked loops, laser interferometry, and online advertising systems.

ACC 2013 at a Glance • Dates: June 17–19 (workshops on June 15 and 16) • Hotel: Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel • Submissions (received/accepted): 1864/1137 • Registrants (total/advance): 1475/1206 • Number of parallel sessions: 22 • Number of workshops: one 1.5 day; eight full day; three half day • Number of conference sponsors: nine gold, 12 silver, one bronze • Number of sponsors of flight simulator gallery at the conference banquet: 2 • Number of exhibitors: 16 • Number of lunchtime special sessions: 13 • Proportion of participants attending ACC for the first time; 49% (estimated)

»» Over 20 conference sponsors, where most of the gold sponsors held lunchtime special sessions. A postconference survey conducted to help the organizers assess ACC 2013 as well as determine how best to continue to improve future ACCs. More details on the conference are provided below.

The acceptance rate for papers submitted to the conference was 61%, where 1137 papers were accepted from among the 1864 submissions received for regular, invited, and tutorial sessions. Approximately 59% of registrants were from the United States, 19% from Europe, 11% from Asia, 5% from Canada, 3% from Central/South America, and 1% from Australia/New Zealand. The 1137 accepted papers were presented in 22 parallel sessions across the three main days of the conference. The plenary and semiplenary lectures were the first event of each morning, and the public lecture was held on the evening of the first day of the conference. We were pleased that there were very few “no shows.” The program chair and session chairs worked with several authors who were unable to attend to identify substitute presenters, and as a result the session summary reports show that less than 1% of the papers in the technical program were not presented.

The conference included one plenary lecture, four semiplenary lectures, and a public lecture by distinguished speakers (the semiplenaries included keynotes for the conference themes of societal challenges, sustainability, and smart health care, as well as the Eckman Award lecture): »» Public lecture: “How We Interact with Robots, Feedback Loops, and Autonomous Systems: Historical Perspectives and a Look Forward,” by David Mindell, Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and manufacturing and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States. A fascinating highlight of Mindell’s talk was an animation of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, complete with recordings of the astronauts’ voices as they controlled the lander down to the surface. »» Plenary lecture: “Advanced Motion Control for High Tech

Systems,” by Maarten Steinbuch, distinguished university professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. Stei nbuch’s talk showcased numerous successes in industrial and experimental motion control systems, ranging from semiconductor wafer stages to automotive systems to soccer robots. In an interesting bookend to Mindell’s talk, Steinbuch showed many examples of robotics and automation increasingly pushing their way into everyday life, referring to modern cars as “iPads on wheels.” »» Semiplenary lecture and societal challenges for control keynote: “Event-Based Optimization of Stochastic Systems and Its Applications to Social, Financial, and Eng i neeri ng Problem s,” by Xi-Ren Cao, chaired professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University and affiliate member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China. Cao outlined a framework for eventbased optimization, presented some theoretical justifications, and discussed some examples in queuing networks, financial engineering, and sensor battery charging. »» Semiplenary lecture and sustainability keynote: “The Key to a Successful Next Generation of Buildings: Controlling for Energy

David Mindell giving the first public lecture held at an ACC.

Xi-Ren Cao giving a semiplenary lecture on event-based optimization of stochastic systems.

Jason Marden giving a semiplenary lecture on game theory.

Technical Program

Paul Torcellini giving a semiplenary lecture on control for energy efficient buildings.

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Society Online Lecture Library (http:// www.ieeecss-oll.org).

Workshops

Maarten Steinbuch giving a plenary lecture on advanced motion control.

Markus Fromherz giving a semiplenary lecture on health-care systems.

Efficiency,” by Paul Torcellini, principal group manager for commercial buildings research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, United States. Torcellini’s energetic talk challenged us to think about the balance between active and passive control of buildings, both of which can be critical for future buildings. Torcellini also touched on similar themes to David Mindell’s when he described the difficulty of designing simple and effective user interfaces for increasingly complex environmental control systems. »» Semiplenary lecture and smart health care systems keynote: “Intelligent Monitoring and Decision Support in Healthcare Systems,” Markus Fromherz, chief innovation officer of healthcare at Xerox Corporation. Fromherz described a vision for health care

that uses advanced information systems to provide the right information to the right people at the right time so that the best medical decisions are made. »» Semiplenary Eckman Award le c t u r e: “Ga me T he or y: A Modern Approach to Multiagent Coordination,” by Jason Marden, assistant professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, United States, where Marden discussed how local incentives and control laws can be designed such that the overall system converges to a desired global optimal behavior. These plenary and public lectures were well attended and received. The talks provided theoretical as well as practical perspectives from wellknown international researchers from industry, academia, and national laboratories. Recordings of the lectures are available on the IEEE Control Systems

Tamer Basar speaking during the workshop Game-Theoretic Approach to Secure and Resilient Control Systems. 148 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2013

The preconference workshops at ACC allowed for a quick introduction to emerging areas or topics of established importance to the field. Depending on the topic and the preferences of the organizers, a workshop can emphasize introductory and tutorial content or can focus on recent research. While there wasn’t a distinct division, workshops scheduled for Saturday were generally more tutorial in nature for newcomers or nonregular attendees, while the Sunday workshops were more likely to go further in depth on more advanced topics of interest to regular attendees. After reviewing the workshop proposals received, the conference organizing committee selected a subset of workshops, which were advertised and open for registration. Twelve workshops were ultimately offered in the program, including three half-, eight full-, and one 1.5-day workshops: »» The ARIMA and VARIMA Time Series (half day) Organizer: Ky Vu »» Control of Power Inverters for the Smart Grid (half day) Organizer: Qing-Chang Zhong »» Stochastic Models, Information Theory, and Lie Groups (half day) Organizer: Gregory Chirikjian »» Robust State and Unknown Input Estimation: A Practical Guide to Design and Applications (full day) Organizers: Stefen Hui and Stanislaw Zak »» Gain Scheduled MPC: Design a nd Implementat ion Usi ng MATLAB (full day) Organizer: Liuping Wang »» Hu ma n Factors i n Cont rol (full day) Organizers: James Brooks, Kit Siu, and Anand Tharanathan »» Nonlinear Regression (full day) Organizer: R. Russell Rhinehart »» Game-Theoretic Approach to Secure and Resilient Control Systems (full day)

Organizers: Tamar Basar and Quanyan Zhu »» ID of Nonlinear ParameterVarying Systems: Theory and Applications (full day) Organizers: Wallace Larimore and Michael Buchholz »» Decision Making Algorithm for Unmanned Vehicles (full day) Organizers: Sivakumar Rathinam, Krishnamoorthy Kalyanam, and Swaroop Darbha »» Emerging Applications in Systems and Control Theory for Neuroscience and Neural Medicine (full day) Organizers: ShiNung Ching, M. Bra ndon Westover, a nd Sridevi Sarma »» Active Disturbance Rejection Control: Industrial Solutions to Process Uncertainties (1.5 days) Organizers: Zhiqiang Gao, Yi Huang, Enrico Canuto, Bao-Zhu Guo, and Hebertt Sira Ramirez. In total, 134 people participated in the workshops.

High-School Workshops Two workshops were offered, free of charge, to local high school students and teachers as well as middle and high school-aged children of ACC 2013 attendees. Nuno Martins organized a workshop, Fostering Excellence in Robotics, which was offered on the afternoon of June 16, just prior to the conference opening reception to which the workshop attendees were invited. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan organized a workshop, The Beauty of Controls, on June 17, where middle and high school students were also given a tour of the ACC 2013 exhibits to showcase interesting applications of controls. In total, over 80 students, parents, and high school teachers participated in these workshops, with a number of the students attending both workshops. Both high school workshops were a success, with many of the students indicating that they learned significantly from their attendance and participation in these workshops.

An exhibitor explains control-oriented products to middle school and high school students attending the Beauty of Controls High School Workshop.

Lunchtime Special Sessions Conference organizers invested significant effort in soliciting and assisting with the organization of special sessions during the lunchtime breaks. These sessions covered various topics that are not typically covered in an ACC technical program. On the education front, Chris Buhr of MathWorks organized a session in which Magnus Egerstedt of the Georgia Institute of Technology spoke about how “Flipping the Robotics Classroom” can be an ideal format for engineering courses where exploratory, practical tinkering is grounded in solid theory. With ACC 2013 in Washington, D.C., where a number of funding agencies are headquartered, the topic of funding opportunities was covered in three sessions organized by

Cheryl Schrader, chancellor of the Missouri University of Science and Technology and past president of the IEEE Control Systems Society, giving the keynote address at the lunchtime special session on the history of women in control.

Fahmida Chowdury and Radhakisan Baheti of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition to a discussion on how to submit proposals and the proposal review process for federal agencies such as NSF, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Army Research Off ice, t he U.S. Off ice of Naval Research, and the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, particular aspects covered included opportunities for multidisciplinary research in health-related fields and cyberphysical systems. A number of ACC 2013’s gold sponsors also held special lunchtime sessions. Xerox held a session on smart health care sessions, Halliburton led a session on control applications to the oil and gas industry, United Technologies Research Center held a session on integrated building systems, National Instruments outlined an integrated platform for advanced embedded cont rol, a nd Eaton Corporation highlighted megatrends shaping research and technology at their company. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan led two history-oriented workshops, one on the history of women in control and another on the history of workshops for middle and high school students and teachers. Other special sessions included a session organized by Stephane Lafortune on software synthesis, a session organized by Frederica Darema on info symbiotic systems/dynamic data-driven


Social Events

applications systems, and another organized by Fahmida Chowdhury and Daniel Rivera on expanding the scope of control systems science into the domain of human behavior.

Student Programs ACC 2013 supported students in a variety of ways. Students were offered lower registration rates (in addition to being given a conference banquet ticket) and were also offered lower room rates at the conference hotel. ACC 2013 also coordinated a conference-wide Student Best Paper Award (see “AACC and ACC Awards”) and provided student travel grants. Thanks to funds from the AACC, IEEE Control Systems Society, and ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division, over 140 students were granted partial travel support to present papers at ACC 2013. For the first time for ACC, a notable portion of this student travel support was paid up front by ACC 2013 so that many students received gratis conference registration and/or they had a reduced amount to pay at the time of check-out from the conference hotel.

Sponsors and Exhibitors The conference had nine gold sponsors, 12 silver sponsors, and one bronze sponsor. Two of these sponsors also sponsored the flight simulator gallery

Sponsors of the 2013 ACC.

at our evening banquet at the NASM. Our sponsors ranged from large multinational corporations to small businesses. Gold and silver sponsors had the option of an exhibit booth, and many took advantage of this offer. The 16 exhibitors included publishing companies, suppliers of control hardware and software for education and research, and companies seeking to hire control engineers and scientists. As is customary at ACCs, gold sponsors were invited to organize lunchtime sessions to inform attendees about their companies’ research activities and employment/collaboration opportunities. Five such sessions were held and were well attended.

A view of the opening reception. 150 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2013

The social program for the conference was another highlight. Both the opening and closing receptions were held at the Renaissance Hotel. At the opening reception, a slide show was played and provided useful information about various conference events, ranging from the special lunchtime sessions, the awards ceremony, lunch options, as well as all the activities being offered during the evening banquet at the NASM on the National Mall. Similarly, a slide show was also played at the closing reception and highlighted and recapped some of the conference events. A big change from the traditional ACC luncheon banquet was to treat attendees to a unique evening banquet at the NASM. ACC attendees and their guests had exclusive use of NASM for the evening, including a buffetstyle dinner and open bar to enable attendees to eat, network, and stroll around and enjoy the many exhibits and activities at the NASM. These activities included free screenings of shows in NASM’s IMAX theater and planetarium as well as opportunities (courtesy of GE and Xerox) to try the fun ride simulators and/or interactive flight simulators. Museum docents and a Smithsonian curator for the newest NASM exhibit on timekeeping and navigation, Carlene Stephens,

AACC and ACC Awards

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he ACC is the venue for the annual announcements of the awards of the American Automatic Control Council as well as the Student Best Paper Award given by the conference. The Awards Ceremony was held after the morning sessions on the second day of the conference and was attended by approximately 150 people. This year’s AACC honors went to the following individuals: • Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award to A. Stephen Morse “for fundamental contributions to linear systems theory, geometric control theory, logic-based and adaptive control, and distributed sensing and control” • John R. Ragazzini Education Award to Mathukumalli Vidyasagar “for outstanding contributions to automatic control education through publication of textbooks and research monographs” • Control Engineering Practice Award to H. Eric Tseng “for original applications of advanced and classical estimation and control theory to the automotive industry” • Donald P. Eckman Award to Vijay Gupta “for contributions to theory of estimation and control of networked, cyberphysical systems” • O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award for a Theory-Oriented Paper to Laurent Lessard and Sanjay Lall for their ACC 2012 paper “Optimal Controller Synthesis for the Decentralized Two-Player Problem with Output Feedback.”

O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award recipients Sanjay Lall and Laurent Lessard with Russ Rhinehart.

Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award recipient Stephen Morse and Russ Rhinehart.

AACC President Russell (Russ) Rhinehart opening the awards ceremony.

Stephen Morse addressing the audience after receiving the Bellman Control Heritage Award.

Donald P. Eckman Award recipient Vijay Gupta and Russ Rhinehart.

AACC Secretariat B. Wayne Bequette presents the Control Engineering Practice Award to H. Eric Tseng.

John R. Ragazzini Education Award recipient Mathukumalli Vidyasagar and Russ Rhinehart.


The AACC O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award for an Applications-Oriented Paper was not given this year. For more information on the AACC awards, see http://www.a2c2.org. Also recognized at the ACC Awards Ceremony are the ACC Student Best Paper Award finalists and winner. The finalists are announced before the conference and the winner, selected based also on the conference paper presentation, is announced at the Awards Ceremony. A student must be the first author and presenter of a nominated paper to be eligible for the award. Over 90 students were nominated in this year’s competition. The finalists for 2013 were (the first-listed author is the nominated student): • Konstantinos Gatsis, A. Ribeiro, and G. Pappas, “Optimal Power Management in Wireless Control Systems” • Javad Ghaderi and R. Srikant, “Opinion Dynamics in Social Networks: A Local Interaction Game with Stubborn Agents” • Pontus Giselsson, “Optimal Preconditioning and Iteration Complexity Bounds for Gradient-Based Optimization in MPC”

• Shuo Han, U. Topcu, M. Tao, H. Owhadi, and R. Murray, “Convex Optimal Uncertainty Quantification: Algorithms and A Case Study in Energy Storage Placement for Power Grids” • Anup Menon and J. Baras, “Convergence Guarantees for a Decentralized Algorithm Achieving Pareto Optimality.” Konstantinos Gatsis received the Student Best Paper Award.

Student Best Paper Award winner Konstantinos Gatsis with Program Chair Danny Abramovitch, and other finalists looking on.

Student Best Paper finalists, from left: Konstantinos Gatsis, Javad Ghaderi, Pontus Giselsson, Shuo Han, and Anup Menon.

(Back row) 2013 AACC and ACC award recipients with (front row) Lucy Pao, Danny Abramovitch, and Russ Rhinehart.

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The conference banquet at the Smithsonian National Air Space Museum was a real treat for attendees.

Sean Andersson (Exhibits chair), Haitham Hindi (vice chair for Industry and Applications), and Kathryn Johnson (vice chair for Invited Sessions).

were also available throughout the evening to discuss various exhibits with interested attendees. The announcements that are usually given at the ACC conference banquet were given at the beginning of plenary and semiplenary talks. Before the Monday semiplenaries, general conference logistics were announced. Before Tuesday’s semiplenaries, Ian Craig issued a video invitation to the 2014 IFAC World Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.

Abe Haddad (left) and Steve Kahne deep in conversation.

Information on the 2014 IFAC World Congress can be found at http://www. ifac2014.org/. Before Maarten Steinbuch’s plenary lecture on Wednesday morning, several short announcements were made. Russ Rhinehart, AACC president, gave an overview of the organization; Lucy Pao and Danny Abramovitch overviewed some facts and figures for the conference and thanked their operating and program

committees; and Dawn Tilbury, the general chair for ACC 2014, and her Operating Committee invited, via a unique team performance, everyone to Portland, Oregon, for next year’s ACC. More information about ACC 2014 can be found at http://a2c2.org/ conferences/acc2014.

Acknowledgments ACC 2013 initiated several innovations that required extra efforts on the part


Survey Results All registered attendees were asked to provide feedback on ACC 2013 as well as suggestions for future ACCs through an online survey. At the time that this was due for publication, the survey had just closed. The response rate was 34%, which is higher than recent past ACC postconference surveys. The results should be interpreted with the appropriate caveats. A few salient points from the survey results: • We are gratified by the overall assessment of the conference: ACC 2013 met or exceeded the expectations of 92% of respondents and disappointed 8%. • This was the first ACC for 49% of the respondents. The corresponding percentage from ACC 2012’s postconference survey was 52% and from ACC 2007’s postconference survey was 41%. • 45% of the respondents were university faculty/staff, 41% university students, 11% industry, and 1% government. • 54% of those responding to the survey came from the United States, 21% from Europe, 12% from Asia, 5% from Canada, and 5% from Central or South America. • Of the respondents who indicated AACC-sponsoring society affiliations, 83% are members of IEEE, 18% of ASME, 14% of AIAA, 11% of SIAM, 5% of AIChE, and 3% of ISA. (Many attendees are members of multiple societies.) • Regarding our experiments with trying an off-site dinner banquet and holding a public lecture: »» 85% of respondents agreed (20%) or strongly agreed (65%) with the statement that they “enjoyed

of the superb Operating Committee: Sean B. Andersson (Exhibits chair), Randal W. Beard (Publications chair), Carolyn Beck (vice chair for Student Affairs), Linda Bushnell (vice chair for

the evening banquet at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM).” 66% of respondents disagreed (35%) or strongly disagreed (31%) with the statement that they “prefer the traditional hotel lunch banquet rather than an evening banquet held off-site.” »» 78% agreed (51%) or strongly agreed (27%) with the statement that “ACCs should continue to hold public lectures.” The survey also asked a number of other questions and requested free-form feedback. Some positive and negative comments that were shared by many respondents are: • The evening banquet at NASM received an especially large number (over 100) of enthusiastic reviews. • David Mindell’s public lecture received a number of positive comments. • Many attendees enjoyed the downtown Washington, D.C. location, within walking distance to numerous museums and monuments (most of which are free to visit). • The registration, exhibits, and coffee break areas were overcrowded. • There are too many parallel sessions. While we were delighted by the record number of registrants for ACC 2013, we apologize for the resulting congestion in the conference areas of the hotel. The issue of “too many parallel sessions” is an ongoing discussion item among the members of the AACC and the lead organizers of future ACCs. For more survey results, please visit the conference Web site: http://a2c2.org/conferences/acc2013.

Workshops), Santosh Devasia (Publicity chair), Eric W. Frew (Registration chair), Haitham Hindi (vice chair for Industry and Applications), Katie Johnson (vice chair for Invited Sessions), Zongli Lin

Wayne Bequette, Cheryl Schrader, Karlene Hoo, Russ Rhinehart, and Jordan Berg enjoying catching up with one another. 154 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2013

(Local Arrangements chair), Peter Meckl (Finance chair), and Lalit K. Mestha (vice chair for Special Sessions). Our gratitude extends well beyond the Operating Committee. Pradeep Misra, formerly an officer of AACC, helped to iron out and sign the conference hotel contract. PaperPlaza gurus Pradeep Misra and especially Alessandro Astolfi provided instantaneous responses at all times of the day or night! Russ Rhinehart, Jordan Berg, and Wayne Bequette of the AACC leadership helped with many matters over the multiple years that went into planning ACC 2013. Bob Judd also provided his time and careful eye to ensure our contracts did not have any regrettable loopholes. Tariq Samad and Faryar Jabbari also offered timely advice and guidance

Registration Chair Eric Frew and Local Arrangements Chair Zongli Lin with student volunteers. Front row, from left: Xiaoya Wei, Farhad Goodarzi, Alborz Alavian, Sheri Gravette, Sarah Radzihovsky, Tian Liang, Y.J. Peng, and Ambrish Patel. Middle row, from left: Frank Lagor, Paul Moubarak, Ma Zhou, Michelle Malveaux, Sudhalahari Bommareddy, Saria Sheikh, Tingyue Gan, Tse-Huai Wu, and Zongli Lin. Back row, from left: Tyler Clark, Bohua Zhang, Andrew Loeber, Issam Boumlic, Marie Okeke, Elizabeth Davies, Alexandre Cheytanov, and Eric Frew.

whenever asked. Brenn Ellsworth designed the elegant ACC 2013 logo. Many attendees commented on the great location of the ACC 2013 hotel, which was within walking distance to many museums and monuments. We learned a lot from working hard to organize such a large conference, we thank all the attendees and volunteers at all levels for their help, and we would recommend holding ACC in Washington, D.C., again! Lucy Pao Danny Abramovitch

21st Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation

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he 2013 Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2013), took place in Platanias-Chania, Crete, June 25–28. This conference was the 21st in the series and took place in Chania, the birthplace of the MED conferences, which started in 1993. The conference venue was the Minoa Palace Resort and Spa, a great hotel on the beach, located in Platanias, a village on the outskirts of Chania. This and all previous MED conferences have been technically cosponsored by the IEEE Control Systems and Robotics and Automation Societies. The Mediterranean Control Association (MCA) is the sponsoring parent organization that oversees all of the MED conferences. MCA was founded in 1998 and is registered in Cyprus as a nonprofit organization. T he tec h n ical prog ram was chaired by Nikos Tsourveloudis of the Technical University of Crete. More

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2013.2279490 Date of publication: 14 November 2013

Chania Harbor, Crete, Greece.

than 320 contributed and invited papers were submitted, of which 248 were accepted. The authors were from 43 countries with the top three countries being Italy, Greece, and the United States. The 212 contributed and 36 invited papers were presented in 48 technical sessions. The 49 members of the International Program Committee served as associate editors, and several hundreds of reviewers worked voluntarily to ensure the scientific quality of the contributions. The conference had 222 registrants.

During the first day, on Tuesday June 25, two tutorials were presented: “Who’s Afraid of Fractional Order Laplace?” and “UAV Autonomy and State-of-theArt Technologies and Applications in Mediterranean Countries.” There were four interesting and wellattended keynote addresses by leaders in the field. On Wednesday, June 26, Anibal Ollero of the Universidad de Sevilla, Spain presented “Cooperating UAS: From Information Acquisition to Physical Interactions,” and Frank Lewis of the University of Texas at Arlington, United
