IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS SOCIETY TECHNICAL COMMITTEE ON DISCRETE EVENT SYSTEMS Newsletter.....................................................March, 2000 Editor: Edwin K. P. Chong Chair, IEEE CSS Technical on DES School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University 1285 Electrical Engineering Bldg. West Lafayette, IN 47907-1285 Phone: (765) 494-9143 Fax: (765) 494-3371 e-mail: echong@ecn.purdue.edu WWW: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~echong/ DESTC Web Page: http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~echong/des_tc/ _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contents: 1. Editorial 2. Announcements 2.1 Research positions at IRISA / INRIA Rennes 2.2 Call for Nominations for INFORMS College on Simulation Distinguished Service Award 3. Conferences 3.1 HYBRID SYSTEMS: COMPUTATION AND CONTROL (HSCC'00) Third International Workshop, Pittsburgh, PA USA March 23-25 (Thurs-Sat), 2000 3.2 5th Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (WODES2000) Special sessions for software demonstrations 3.3 2nd DARPA-JFACC SYMPOSIUM ON ADVANCES IN ENTERPRISE CONTROL Minneapolis, MN, July 10-11, 2000 4. Journals 4.1 Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems: Modeling, Analysis, and Control A Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation 4.2 Special Issue on Systems and Control Methods for Communication Networks IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control _._________________________________________________________________________._ Editorial _._________________________________________________________________________._ Welcome to the first newsletter of the IEEE Control Systems Technical Committee Group on Discrete Event Systems for 2000! See http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~echong/des_tc/ for information on the DESTC. Notice the delimiter between articles/contributions in this newsletter. If you are using an editor to read this article, you can go directly to the delimiter by searching for the string "_.__" (underscore,period,underscore,underscore). This feature is useful for quickly skipping to the next item. _._________________________________________________________________________._ Announcements _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: Albert Benveniste and Francois Le Gland Research positions at IRISA / INRIA Rennes INRIA is an internationally recognized research institute in Computer Science and Automation, funded by the french government. INRIA seeks outstanding candidates who have completed a Ph.D. (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Signal and Image Processing, or Applied Mathematics. Permanent positions are open at the level of "Chargé de Recherche" (best corresponding to Research Assistant, but with tenure). They are open to French as well as non-French applicants. French speaking is not requested. Applicants should have a commitment to research as well as transfer of results to industry. The Signals, Models and Algorithms (Sigma2) group at IRISA / INRIA Rennes seeks candidates with the following profile: DISCRETE EVENT SYSTEMS, DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS. Applicant shall work on management and diagnosis of large, distributed systems. Industrial applications on telecommunication network management, in cooperation with major industrial companies. Interested persons should contact as soon as possible Albert Benveniste, mailto:benveniste@irisa.fr http://www.irisa.fr/sigma2/benveniste/home.html Francois Le Gland, mailto:legland@irisa.fr http://www.irisa.fr/sigma2/legland/index.html and no later than FEBRUARY 15, so as to have enough time for preparing a formal condidature. For further information on IRISA / INRIA Rennes, see http://www.irisa.fr/newtree/Welcomee.html, on the Sigma2 group, see http://www.irisa.fr/sigma2/index-en.html, and on the city of Rennes, see http://www.rennestelecom.com/index_map.htm. _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: "David Kelton" Call for Nominations for the INFORMS College on Simulation DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD To recognize individuals who have provided long-standing, exceptional service to the simulation community, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) College on Simulation (http://www.informs-cs.org) has established its Distinguished Service Award, which may be given to at most one person annually. Sustained service to the simulation community should extend over a period of 15 to 20 years or longer and be acquitted with distinction. The concept of service for this award does NOT include teaching or research contributions. Areas of volunteer service include, but are not limited to, 1. elected offices in simulation societies; 2. editorial responsibilities for simulation such as department editor, area editor, and editor-in-chief; 3. conference responsibilities involving simulation such as program chair, proceedings editor, general chair, and being a member of the organizing or program committee; 4. appointed positions for simulation-related activities such as serving on committees and being a newsletter editor; and 5. undertakings and actions that promote simulation in the "larger community." Nominations for the Distinguished Service Award can be made by anyone and are made by sending a letter of nomination to the chair of the award selection committee by October 1, 2000. Letters of nomination should identify the nominee's areas of exceptional service, detailing the activities for which the nominee is believed to deserve this award. The nominee's current vita must be included with the nomination letter. The individual or individuals making the nomination have the primary responsibility for justifying why the nominee should receive this award. If given, the award will be presented in December at the 2000 Winter Simulation Conference in Orlando, Florida (http://www.wintersim.org). A list of past winners of the award can be found at http://www.informs-cs.org/dsawin.html Nominations should be sent to the Chair of the Selection Committee: W. David Kelton Department of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management College of Business Administration, Lindner Hall University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0130, USA Email: david.kelton@uc.edu Phone: +1-513-556-0404 Fax: +1-513-556-5499 This address is sufficient for next-day delivery services. _._________________________________________________________________________._ Conferences _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: Bruce Krogh (krogh@ece.cmu.edu): HYBRID SYSTEMS: COMPUTATION AND CONTROL (HSCC'00) Third International Workshop Pittsburgh, PA USA March 23-25 (Thurs-Sat), 2000 Pre-registration Deadline: March 1, 2000 PLEASE VISIT THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE FOR INFORMATION http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~hs00 _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: Rene Boel During the 5th Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (WODES2000) (for more information see: http://systems.rug.ac.be/wodes2000/) to be held in Ghent, Belgium, on August 21-23, 2000 there will be one or more sessions where developers of tools for DES analysis and synthesis will have an opportunity to demonstrate their software. The tools to be demonstrated could solve any of the problems in the scope of the WODES2000 conference. In particular, but not exclusively, there could be tools demonstrations for - verification and control synthesis for discrete event and hybrid systems; - perturbation analysis and sensitivity analysis tools; - (max,+) based tools and scheduling. The proposed format for each tools session consists of brief plenary presentations introducing the tools to be demonstrated, followed by demonstrations in smaller groups. For each of the tools there will also be the possibility of a brief (1 page) description to be included in the conference proceedings. Deadlines: Declarations of intent to demonstrate a tool, with a brief description of the tool, should preferably be submitted by March 10, 2000 to the conference secretariat (wodes2000@systems.rug.ac.be). These submissions should explain how the tool fits the scope of the WODES conference. Tools demonstrators will be notified of the acceptance of their submission by April 15. Those who want to include a one page (non-commercial) description of their tool in the conference proceedings should submit this text in camera ready form by May 1st. Later submissions will be considered, subject to availability of time slots. _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: Paul Hubbard CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd DARPA-JFACC SYMPOSIUM ON ADVANCES IN ENTERPRISE CONTROL Minneapolis, MN July 10-11, 2000 Submission Deadline: April 14, 2000 Aim and Scope This Symposium is second in the series inaugurated by the Symposium on Advances in Enterprise Control (AEC) held in San Diego, CA on November 15-16, 1999. The aim of this symposium is to bring together researchers and practitioners from industry, government and academe to present and discuss the latest developments in all aspects of enterprise control. The Symposium is sponsored by the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) Program in the Information Systems Office (ISO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Symposium seeks papers that (a) describe the results of original research on the topics of interest (listed below), (b) provide broad reviews of the state-of-the-art, or (c) propose and advocate new research directions. Also invited are papers that describe significant practical experiences with current enterprise control systems that exhibit complex dynamic phenomena, illustrate interesting causes for successes or failures, or that illustrate requirements and unmet needs in enterprise control systems. Note that the security classification of this Symposium is unclassified. For your reference, proceedings of the 1st AEC Symposium are available on-line at http://www.darpa.mil/iso/jfacc/aec-symp.htm. The modern enterprise is a large-scale dynamic system with broadly distributed and potentially conflicting goals, resources and constraints, and with multiple semi-autonomous participants -- both human and artificial (e.g., large military operations, financial/trading institutions, logistics systems, manufacturing plants, power grids, etc.). The increasing capabilities of technology to collect, automatically generate, and disseminate information offer the possibility for large-scale enterprises to be more responsive to change. Enterprise plans and orders quickly become obsolete as new information about the current situation becomes available. The challenge is to use real-time information to re-direct enterprise operations effectively. Such systems and challenges define the scope of the Symposium. Topics of Interest Submissions are invited in all areas pertaining to the design, analysis and implementation of enterprise control systems. Topics include but are not limited to: * modeling and representations of large-scale enterprise control systems * analysis, simulation and verification of discrete-event and hybrid systems * integrated planning/scheduling/control * distributed and multi-agent control architectures * adaptive control in large-scale enterprises * game-theoretic control and adversarial control * role and impact of humans on the control loop * reasoning at multiple levels of abstraction * failures and pathological behavior in enterprise control * applications and case studies Submissions Researchers are invited to submit an extended abstract as a postscript, MS-Word, PDF or RTF file via e-mail (mailto:aec-papers@jfacc.cgi.com). The abstract should not exceed 10 double-spaced pages or 4 pages in two-column format. The first page should include the title of the paper, each authors name and affiliation, complete contact information for the corresponding author (postal and e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers), and a one-paragraph summary of the contribution. Full versions of the accepted submissions will be published in the proceedings following the Symposium. Full versions of the papers must conform to the standards of IEEE Computer Society Press guidelines for conference proceedings (see http://computer.org/cspress/instruct.htm). It is an intent of this Symposium to encourage interactions of practitioners and theoreticians, and to make the innovative research more accessible to the enterprise leaders and decision-makers. To this end, all theoretical papers should contain a section that illustrates the key idea and significance of the paper in qualitative terms and examples, and does not require an extensive control-theoretic background. Important Dates Abstract Submission Deadline: April 14, 2000 Notification of Acceptance: May 12, 2000 Full Versions of Papers Due: June 23, 2000 Symposium Dates: July 10-11, 2000 Program Committee Richard Brooks, Penn State University David A. Castanon, Boston University Michael C. Caramanis, Boston University Datta Godbole, Honeywell Alexander Kott, Logica Carnegie Group Bruce H. Krogh, Carnegie Mellon University Nelson D. Ludlow, Orincon Corporation Peter B. Luh, University of Connecticut Marwan A. Simaan, University of Pittsburgh Boris Stilman, University of Colorado at Denver _._________________________________________________________________________._ Journals _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: "Xiaolan Xie" CALL FOR PAPERS (2nd Call) Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems: Modeling, Analysis, and Control A Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation Semiconductor manufacturing is rapidly growing to be an important industry in many countries. Productivity of semiconductor manufacturing systems is crucial to their automation due to enormous investment on the equipment, which may be outdated in two or three years. Owing to the complicated production procedures and the large number of shared resources, the automation of semiconductor manufacturing systems has tremendous complexity and deserves special attention. This special issue aims at presenting recent developments and applications in three critical stages of semiconductor manufacturing automation research -- modeling, analysis, and control: * Modeling: how representation formalisms can be developed to describe key system features in concise forms and to facilitate the subsequent stages of qualitative and quantitative analysis. * Analysis: how analytical or simulation techniques can be devised to efficiently obtain logical behavior and performance measures of the system. * Control: how methodologies can be formulated to prevent undesirable system states or to optimize the system operation under resource constraints. Industry Participants: We extend a special invitation to industry participants to describe current practices, needs, and visions for the future. Industry papers are important to set the context for the study of modeling, analysis, and control of semiconductor manufacturing systems. They can point out relevant and difficult problem areas to channel research attention and can report on the results of specific implementations. Topics: Possible topics for papers submitted to the special issue include but are not limited to: * Modeling, synthesis, and analysis methodologies * Knowledge-based and optimization-based planning and scheduling techniques * Discrete-event and hybrid control techniques * Analytic and simulation-based performance evaluation methods * Object-oriented design and modeling methods * CAD and simulation tools for system development * System comparisons and benchmark studies * Industrial applications and case studies * New challenges and solutions for automation of next generation Fabs Requirements: To establish coherence between the papers in the special issue, submissions must address the following points, where relevant: * Where does the work fit in the above three critical fields? * What problem/deficit/need does it address? * What other work has been done in this area, and why is this contribution important? * What commercial off-the-shelf hardware and/or software were used? * Is the emphasis on integration of existing work, or on new work? * Who are the potential users of the work? All manuscripts should include a title page containing the title of the paper, full names and affiliations, complete postal and electronic addresses, phone and fax numbers, an abstract, and a list of keywords. The contacting author should be clearly identified. Important Dates: August 1999: Call for Papers April 1, 2000: Deadline for Paper Submission October 1, 2000: Completion of First Review May 1, 2001: Completion of Final Review October 2001: Publication Guest Editors: Professor MuDer Jeng Department of Electrical Engineering National Taiwan Ocean University Keelung 202, Taiwan, ROC Tel: 886-2-24622192 Fax: 886-2-24627054 E-mail: b0162@ind.ntou.edu.tw Dr. Xiao-Lan Xie INRIA/MACSI Team ENIM-Ile du Saulcy 57045 Metz Cedex, France Tel: 33-3-87 34 67 36 Fax: 33-3-87 34 69 35 E-mail: xie@loria.fr Thomas E. Byrd Intel Corporation CH3-68 5000 W. Chandler Blvd. Chandler, AZ 85226-3699, USA Tel: 602-554-4850 E-mail: thomas.e.byrd@intel.com Submission of Papers: Electronic submissions in PDF, postscript, or zipped postscript form are strongly encouraged, and will expedite the review and publication process. Please FTP to the INCOMING directory of site ieeetra.engr.uconn.edu, or email to ieeetra@engr.uconn.edu. Please then email your submission letter to ieeetra@engr.uconn.edu including the name of the file, paper type (Regular or Short), and mentioning that it is for the Special Issue on Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems. Submission in paper form will still be acceptable, although the reviewing process may be longer. In this case, please send seven copies to: Professor Peter B. Luh Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering University of Connecticut Storrs, CT 06269-2157, USA Tel: (860) 486-4821 Fax: (860) 486-5585 E-mail: Luh@engr.uconn.edu For more detailed information about electronic submissions, please contact ieeetra@engr.uconn.edu. _._________________________________________________________________________._ Contributed by: Weibo Gong Call for Papers Special Issue on Systems and Control Methods for Communication Networks Rapid evolution of communication networks, such as the Internet, wireless mobile networks, and local area networks, is bringing about new challenges to systems and control researchers, which translate into substantial new research on the topic of systems and control methods for communication networks, as evidenced by the increasing number of publications on this general topic. There are several challenging issues facing researchers on this topic, among which are: First, to understand the behavior of complex networks, we need insightful and convincing mathematical models. Model abstraction, hierarchical modeling, and multi-resolution modeling are some of the underlying issues. Appropriate modeling has been a tradition in systems and control research. Modeling in terms of frequency responses forms the basis of the classical control design, while state space modeling is the foundation of ``modern" methods. Communication networks modeling should benefit from these earlier experiences. Second, congestion control and management play important roles in the efficient operation of high speed networks. Control schemes in this area often involve multiple time scales, random delay, and nonlinear phenomena. Analysis and design tools developed in control theory are very useful here. Incentive theory, game theory, team theory, and multi objective optimization provide important tools for the development of pricing schemes for network resources. Distributed optimization and control algorithms are necessary for implementation of the theory. Congestion collapse and feedback-caused synchronization are closely related to the stability analysis of nonlinear feedback systems. Third, various queueing disciplines are currently being proposed and studied to guarantee quality of service, and to provide differentiated services. The dynamics of these queueing disciplines, coupled with long range dependent sources, pose challenging analysis and design issues. Systems and control methods have motivated significant research work in this direction, but further effort is definitely in order. Fourth, in addition to the issues common to all communication networks, we also have control related issues inherent to wireless networks. For example, systems and control methodologies have already contributed significantly to power control schemes. There are also several important issues in the area of mobile networks that require research from the systems and control-theoretic perspective. These four items, and many others that can be added to this list, demonstrate that the topic of ``communication networks'' constitutes yet another platform on which many successful systems and control-theoretic research efforts can be built. The purpose of this special issue is to provide a coherent and focused outlet for this research, by collecting recent work in this area under one cover. We welcome submission of papers on any aspect of systems and control methods in communication networks. All submitted papers will be subject to peer review as any other paper submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. The time table for the special issue is as follows: Submission Deadline: September 30, 2000 Expected Publication Date: April 2002 The special issue will be put together by a team consisting of the two guest editors, Tamer Basar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Weibo Gong (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), and some associate editors. Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers, prepared as per the regular IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control guidelines, to one of the two guest editors listed below. Professor Tamer Basar Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801-2307 Phone: (217)-333-3607 Fax: (217) 265-0997 Email: tbasar@decision.csl.uiuc.edu or Professor Weibo Gong Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 Phone:(413)545-0384 Fax: (413)545-1993 Email: gong@ecs.umass.edu Submissions could be made either in electronic form (postscript file) or as hard copies, and in the latter case seven (7) copies are needed. Tamer Basar and Weibo Gong Guest Editors _._________________________________________________________________________._ The End _._________________________________________________________________________._ Fri Feb 25 14:00:34 EST 2000