Report: Digitalization of Cyber-physical Systems workshop (CyDiSy)

We began our week with two separate activities: In Monte Verita the conference centre was turned into a showcase where local school kids could come and be inspired by the Nomadz robot football team playing, and the self-location abilities of the CrazyFlie mini drone. 

A concurrent VIP brainstorming event was taking place at the Landesmuseum in Zurich, led by Saverio Bolognani. Saverio led us through storytelling techniques and asked us all to reflect on what made previous "moonshot" projects a success or a failure. 

On to Monte Verita!

After welcome drinks and a dinner on the Tuesday night, we were all up bright early for our opening keynote, Dawn Tilbury, who presented her experiences of using digital twins to robustify manufacturing processes. She was followed by Ana Radovanovic who told us about carbon-aware computing at Google and then Angelia Nedich talking about trust and resilience in distributed optimization.

After three excellent keynotes, we were all ready for lunch, which we enjoyed over the poster session. Our participants voted for their choice to win the competition, but more on that later...

As part of the judging process, we asked our participants an extra question about what control theory means to them, and while most of the answers made sense, we'd certainly be interested to know how pizza is involved!

The afternoon was kicked off by Ben Recht walking us through a history of control systems and challenging us that nothing new has really been developed within control theory since the 1950s.

We then moved on from talks, and on to the active participation part of the afternoon, where Andrea Censi led participants through a small group activity exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) and their impacts on our work, how they can be useful and what their limitations are. 

Feeling tired, we headed for dinner and re-energised with a "pub" quiz, crowning the imaginatively named team "team" as victors.

Day two

Day two began with Aus Ozdaglar speaking about "Independent Learning Dynamics for Stochastic Games" - and you know you are in for an exciting keynote when the speaker begins by saying they are going to contract a previous keynote! Heinrich Sandberg continued in a less controversial fashion, speaking to us about securing networks against malicious attacks. 

The two plenary talks were followed by two semi-plenaries, from Francesca Parise and Alessandro Chiuso speaking about graphon systems and uncertainty quantification in data-driven control, respectively.

Time to socialise

A quick lunch followed, and then we split into groups for social activities. One group travelling to Bellinzona for a rafting trip. The low water levels meant that the rafting was less white-knuckle ride and more an enjoyable pleasure trip, but the group got to bask in some beautiful views and float down some rapids. The second group enjoyed a short hike in the hills surrounding Monte Verità, while the third group enjoyed a boat ride out to the beautiful Brissago islands.

To the conference dinner

The conference dinner at Grotto Broggini was a chance for everyone to come together and enjoy the delicious Ticinese cuisine in the Ticinese climate.

We took the opportunity to crown the winners of the poster competition, and it is a testament to the quality of the posters presented that we had a three way tie in the voting. So congratulations to our winners, "Receding Horizon Games, why do we care and what about stability?" by Sophie Hall, "Topological obstructions to stabilization: Grassmannian manifolds" by Wouter Jongeneel and "BIG Hype: Best Intervention in Games using Hypergradients" by Giuseppe Belgioioso.

The final day

It was another early start for our final day. We began with Claudio De Persis speaking on Data-driven control of nonlinear systems, before hearing from Maurice Heemels on Communication in Control and Control in Communication and then splitting off into the topic specific sessions: Robust Learning for Dynamics and Control​ by Ian Manchester and Smart Buildings or Smart People? The Role of Automation for Low Carbon by Arno Schlueter.

And then after a short recap and farewell by NCCR Automation director John Lygeros, CyDiSy was over and it was time for everyone to head home. 

The organisers had such a wonderful week and would like to thank all of our speakers, participants and moderators for their engagement. We are looking forward to seeing you all again at the next NCCR Symposium. 

Photos: Ben Sawicki, Elise Cahard and Linda Seward.