Programme

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

The Control 2026 Proceedings Booklet is available for download here.

The Control 2026 Conference Photo Gallery is available for download here.

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 – 11:30

Coffee Break

11:30 – 12:45

Panel: From Research Challenges to Real-World Impact

12:45 – 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

Multi-UAV Cooperative Search and Rescue under Intermittent Communication

Yi Gou, Sabyasachi Mondal, Venkatraman Renganathan and Antonios Tsourdos

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