IEEE Control Systems Society
Technical Committee on Intelligent Control



The IEEE Control Systems Society has a Technical Committee on Intelligent Control that is dedicated to providing informational items, conferences for technical discussion, etc. to researchers in the IEEE CSS who are interested in the field of intelligent control.

Chair: Kevin M. Passino

Working Groups:

Main Activities:

Current ISIC and ISIC Plans:

Main Research Interests:


The ever increasing technological demands of today call for very complex systems, which in turn require highly sophisticated controllers to ensure that high performance can be achieved and maintained under adverse conditions. There are needs in the control of these complex systems which cannot be met by conventional approaches to control. For instance, there is a significant interest in enhancing current avionic systems so that they can reconfigure the aircraft controls to maintain adequate levels of performance even if there are complete failures in one or more of the actuators or sensors. In a similar manner, there is a significant need to achieve higher degrees of autonomous operation for robotic systems, spacecraft, manufacturing systems, automotive systems, underwater and land vehicles, and others. To achieve such highly autonomous behavior for complex systems one can enhance today's control methods using intelligent control systems and techniques.

The area of Intelligent Control is a fusion of a number of research areas in Systems and Control, Computer Science, and Operations Research among others, coming together, merging and expanding in new directions and opening new horizons to address the problems of this challenging and promising area. Intelligent control systems are typically able to perform one or more of the following functions to achieve autonomous behavior: planning actions at different levels of detail, emulation of human expert behavior, learning from past experiences, integrating sensor information, identifying changes that threaten the system behavior, such as failures, and reacting appropriately. This identifies the areas of Planning and Expert Systems, Fuzzy Systems, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Multi-sensor Integration, Failure Diagnosis, and Reconfigurable Control, to mention but a few, as existing research areas that are related and important to Intelligent Control. While these techniques provide several key approaches to Intelligent Control, for complex systems they are often interconnected to operate within an architecture which is hierarchical and often distributed. It is for this reason that the areas of hierarchical intelligent control, distributed intelligent control, and architectures for intelligent systems are of significant importance in the design and construction of the overall intelligent controller for complex dynamical systems.

Finally, it is of fundamental importance to recognize that (i) intelligent controllers are nonlinear (possibly hierarchical and distributed) controllers that are constructed in nonconventional ways, and (ii) intelligent controllers are often designed to operate in "critical environments" where, for example, the safety of a crew (e.g., in an aircraft/spacecraft), or environmental issues are of concern (e.g., from nuclear power plants or process control). Hence, it is both possible, and of significant importance to introduce mathematical modeling and analysis techniques to be used in the verification and certification of the behavior of intelligent control systems.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Modeling, Analysis, Design: Techniques for Intelligent Control: Applications / Implementations:

ISIC History:

The following summary of locations, chairs and dates outlines the history of the symposium. Note that "GC" and "PC" denote General Chair and Program Chair respectively.

1985 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: G.N. Saridis, PC: A. Meystel
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
August 26, 1985
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation

1987 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: A. Meystel, PC: J.Y.S. Luh
Penn Tower Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
January 19-20, 1987
Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Philadelphia section

1988 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: H.E. Stephanou, PC: A. Meystel, J.Y.S. Luh
Key Bridge Marriott Hotel, Arlington, Virginia
August 24-26, 1988
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society; in collaborative with the
IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society and the IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society

1989 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: A.C. Sanderson, PC: A.A. Desrochers, K. Valavanis
Desmond Americana, Albany, New York
September 25-26, 1989
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society

1990 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: A. Meystel, PC: H. Kwatny, S. Navathe, H. Wechsler
Penn Tower Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
September 5-7, 1990
Co-Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society and the IEEE Society of
Robotics and Automation; in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society

1991 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: H.E. Stephanou, PC: A.H. Levis
Key Bridge Marriott Hotel, Arlington, Virginia
August 13-15, 1991
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society. Concurrently with the 1991
IFAC International Symposium on Distributed Intellegence Systems

1992 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: E. Grant, PC: T.C. Henderson
The Albany Hotel, Glasgow, Scotland
August 11-13, 1992
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society

1993 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: P. Antsaklis, PC: K.M. Passino, U. Ozguner
The Knickerbocker Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
August 25-27, 1993
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society

1994 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: U. Ozguner, PC: L. Acar, M.B. Leahy,Jr.
Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Columbus, Ohio
August 16-18, 1994
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society

1995 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: K. Valavanis, PC: L. Acar, M.B. Leahy,Jr.
Monterey Marriott Hotel, Monterey, California
August 27-29, 1995
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society

1996 IEEE International Symposium on Intellegent Control
GC: K.M. Passino, PC: J.A. Farrell
Ritz-Carlton Dearborn, Dearborn, Michigan
September 15-18, 1996
Sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society, Concurrent with the IEEE Int. Conf. on Control Applications and the IEEE Int. Symp. on Computer-Aided Control System Design


Created by: K. Passino, last revised 3/28/97