What’s in a Name?
IEEE Control Systems (Volume: 45, Issue 1, February 2025)
What’s in a name? With sincere apologies to the Bard, let’s explore the name of this magazine. I would like you all to guess what the name of this magazine is. Is it A) Control Systems Magazine, B) IEEE Control Systems Magazine, or C) IEEE Control Systems?1
1 The answer is C).
Let’s look at various labels that have been used for our field. The IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) website (http://ieeecss.org/about) has the label “Systems and Control.” This page states that CSS is “dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practice of systems and control.” “Automatic control” is mentioned in the very next sentence. Our journals have covered the bases in a way—our flagship theory journal is IEEE Transactions on “Automatic Control,” while our applications journal goes with Control Systems, and, of course, reminds us of the practice aspects through the final word of “Technology.” Our newest open access journal, IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems, retains the phrase “Control Systems” in its entirety. IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems has chosen to split the word into two and firmly qualify the scope of the systems under consideration through the addition of the word “Network.” We have entirely omitted the qualifiers Dynamic, Feedback, and Modeling in these journals. We have also departed distinctly from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and do not use the word “Automation” but rather stick with the adjectival form in our theory journal. Read full text…
Tα πάυτα ρει, The Only Constant Is Change—Heraclitus, 535–475 BC
IEEE Control Systems (Volume: 45, Issue 2, April 2025)
Heraclitus’s musing strikes a chord with us control systems researchers, doesn’t it? After all, we live and breathe dynamic systems. We eat constants and variables for breakfast. We make a four-course dinner of uncertainty quantification, nonconvex optimization, and partial differential equations. We have Lyapunov functions and barrier functions for dessert. So surely, we can parse the sentence “The only constant is change”? Read full text…