G.W. Irwin - Böcker

The 6th IFAC Workshop on Algorithms and Architectures for Real-Time Control (AARTC'2000) was held at Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The objective, as in previous editions, was to show the state-of-the-art and to present new developments and research results in software and hardware for real-time control, as well as to bring together researchers, developers and practitioners, both from the academic and the industrial world.

The AARTC'2000 Technical Program consisted of 11 presented sessions, covering the major areas of software, hardware and applications for real-time control. In particular, sessions adressed robotics, embedded systems, modeling and control, fuzzy logic methods, industrial process control and manufacturing systems, neural networks, parallel and distributed processing, processor architectures for control, software design tools and methodologies, and SCADA and multi-layer control. A total of 38 papers were selected from high-quality full draft papers and late breaking paper contributions (consisting of extended abstracts). Participants from 15 countries attended the AARTC'2000 workshop.

The technical program also included two plenary talks given by leading experts in the field. Roger Goodall (Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, UK) presented "Perspectives on processing for real-time control", and Ricardo Sanz (Universidad Polit�cnica de Madrid, Spain), focused on "CORBA for Control Systems". Another highlight in the program was the final session on industrial presentations which was held in common with the Workshop on Real-Time Programming (WRTP'2000). In this session, Abel Jim�nez (Industria de Turbo Propulsores S. A., Spain) presented the "Thrust Vectoring System Control Concept", Ulrich Schmid (Technische Universit�t Wien, Austria) made a presentation with the title "Applied Research: A Scientist's Perspective", and Harold W. Lawson (Lawson Konsult AB, Sweden) addressed "Systems Engineering of a Successful Train Control System".