Programme

Frederick Douglass Centre, Newcastle University
Helix Science Square
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE4 5TG

09:00 – 09:30

Registration & Coffee

09:30 – 09:45

Welcome – ACE Director

09:45 – 10:30

Keynote 1: Prof Pramod Khargonekar

Control meets  AI:  Automation, Autonomy, and Intelligent Machines

10:30 – 11:00

ACE Key Recommendations

11:00 – 11:15

Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:30

Panel: From Research Challenges to Real-World Impact

12:30 – 13:45

Networking Lunch

13:45 – 14:45

Plenary Session: Building the ACE Community

14:45 – 15:00

Coffee Break

15:00 – 16:00

Interactive NetworkPlus Missions Session

16:00 – 16:30

Closing Reflections

16:30

End of Day 1

08:30 – 09:00

Registration & Coffee

09:00 – 09:15

Welcome – UKACC Chair & Organising Committee

09:15 – 10:00

Keynote 2: Prof Miroslav Krstic

Feedback Linearization in Infinite Dimension: From Exact to Machine-Learned

10:00 – 10:30

Coffee Break

10:30 – 12:00

10:30 – 10:45

Offset-free Tracking Data-Driven Predictive Control

Lucca Heinze Faro, Yuanbo Nie and Paul Trodden

10:45 – 11:00

Spillover-Free Boundary Control of PDEs via L2 Residue Separation

Anton Selivanov

11:00 – 11:15

Entropic Wasserstein Robust Control: A Tunable Interpolation Between Worst-Case and Information Pessimism

Andre Bertolace, Konstantinos Gatsis and Kostas Margellos

11:15 – 11:30

Safety Controller Synthesis of Time-Delayed Polynomial Systems: A Data-Driven Krasovskii-Based Approach

Omid Akbarzadeh, Mohammadhossein Ashoori, Amy Nejati and Abolfazl Lavaei

11:30 – 11:45

Multipliers for Lurye systems with periodic excitation

William Heath, Sayar Das, Joaquin Carrasco

11:45 – 12:00

Performance Analysis of Model Predictive Control with Multiple Constraint Horizons

Allan Andre do Nascimento, Han Wang, Antonis Papachristodoulou and Kostas Margellos

12:00 – 13:30

Lunch & Poster Viewing

13:30 – 15:00

13:30 – 13:45

Embodied Opinion Dynamics for Safety-Critical Motion Control in Dynamic Environments

Zhiqi Tang and Yu Xing

13:45 – 14:00

Risk-Aware Autonomous Driving with Hybrid-MDP Prediction and Chance-Constrained MPC

Siyuan Li, Chengyuan Liu, Jiye Yang and Wen-hua Chen

14:00 – 14:15

Cooperative Control with Relative Distance Estimation under Limited Field-of-View Constraints

Songlin Ma, Thien-Minh Nguyen, Dean Connor, Cuebong Wong and Allahyar Montazeri

14:15 – 14:30

Reinforcement Learning-Based Intelligent Control of Lower Limb Exoskeletons for Personalized Gait Rehabilitation

Yiyang He, Ziwei Wang, and Tao Xue

14:30 – 14:45

Intention-Aware Safe Motion Planning in Uncertain Traffic

Qidong Zhou, Jian Zhou, Pian Yu and Yulong Gao

14:45 – 15:00

Integrated UAV Guidance Algorithm from Low-Level Control to High-Level Mission Planning

Jongrae Kim, Nabil Shaukat, Saikat Dutta

15:00 – 16:00

Coffee Break & Networking

16:00 – 16:30

Siemens Talk: Michal Zlotek

Scaling AI on the Edge: High-Performance Control with Software-Defined Automation

16:30 – 17:00

Talk by Prof Daniel Coca

Direct Data-Driven Identification of the Finite-Horizon GPC Law

17:00 – 19:00

Conference Dinner & Networking

17:00 – 18:00

UKACC AGM (all members of UKACC groups welcome)

19:00

End of Day 2

9:00 – 09:30

Arrival Refreshments

09:30 – 10:15

Keynote 3: Prof Naira Hovakimyan

Ontological Robustness for Certification of Autonomous Systems

10:15 – 10:45

AI in Publishing Talk: Dr. Sneha Rhode Gupta (Wiley)

10:45 – 11:00

Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:30

11:00 – 11:15

Emotion from Motion: Bio-inspired Iterative Learning Control for Character Animation Tasks

Daniel Hobson, Bing Chu and Xiaohao Cai

11:15 – 11:30

Wind Disturbance Rejection and Fault Recovery for Quadplane Trajectory Tracking Using a Supertwisting Observer

Zaidan Zyadat, Nadjim Horri and Thomas Statheros

11:30 – 11:45

Local Plug-and-Play Compatible Stability Conditions for AC Grids

Liam Hallinan and Ioannis Lestas

11:45 – 12:00

Privacy Oriented Coalition Formation for Energy Distribution

Luke Rickard, Paola Falugi and Eric C. Kerrigan

12:00 – 12:15

ILC for stroke rehabilitation: Can current approaches cope with trial-varying initial conditions?

Lucy Hodgins, Chris Freeman and Zehor Belkhatir

12:15 – 12:30

Distributed Control in Agriculture

William Rohde and Fulvio Forni

12:30 – 14:00

Lunch & Poster Competition Final Judging

14:00 – 14:45

14:00 – 14:15

Review of the control101 toolbox

John Anthony Rossiter

14:15 – 14:30

BatteryZoo: Yet Another Toolbox for Battery Modelling, Estimation, and Control

Paing Hmu Ko, Yuanbo Nie, and Ross Drummond

14:30 – 14:45

Enhancing Resilience and Fairness in Microgrid Energy Management: A Convex Optimization Approach

Haochen Tao, Lysandros Tziovani, Stelios Timotheou, and Francesca Boem

14:45 – 15:00

Quanser Director of Engineering, Peter Martin

Durable Skills for Controls Engineers: Feedback from Industrial Engineers to Help Students and New Graduates Succeed

15:00 – 16:00

Awards & Closing Remarks

16:00

End of CONTROL 2026

Quanser

Automatic Control Engineering Network

United Kingdom Automatic Control Council

International Federation of Automatic Control