ep2 - Florian Dörfler: Power is nothing without control

05/16/22 • 23 min

2 Listeners

This episode features an interview with Florian Dörfler, who is an Associate Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. We discuss several topics, including his personal research trajectory, the influence of machine learning on control, future challenges in control theory, among others. Check out Florian's website here: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~floriand/

Outline

00:00 - Intro
01:03 - Personal research trajectory
05:57 - Influence of machine learning on control
07:52 - Why doing research in control?
09:51 - What would you change in control?
11:36 - Where is the field heading?
14:20 - Favourite theorem in control theory
16:20 - Vision: what would you like to achieve?
17:03 - Influential figures
19:17 - Sociology and control
21:23 - What would you do if you were a student today?

Episode links
Florian's website: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~floriand/
Gerschgorin theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershgorin_circle_theorem
Synchronization paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1212134110
Hamming - "A stroke of genius": https://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html

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Podcast info
Podcast website: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/
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Acknowledgments and sponsors
This episode was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research on «Dependable, ubiquitous automation» and the IFAC Activity fund. The podcast benefits from the help of an incredibly talented and passionate team. Special thanks to L. Seward, E. Cahard, F. Banis, F. Dörfler, J. Lygeros, ETH studio and mirrorlake . Music was composed by A New Element.

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Next Episode

ep4 - Alessandro Chiuso: From system identification to computer vision and back

In this episode, our guest is Alessandro Chiuso. Alessandro is a Professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padova. The episode covers several topics, including Alessandro’s research trajectory, his work in system identification and vision, and his passion for skiing. Check out Alessandro’s website here: http://automatica.dei.unipd.it/people/chiuso.html
Outline
00:00 - Intro
01:51 - Research trajectory
03:52 - Influential figures
08:20 - System identification
17:07 - Regularized system identification
23:30 - Vision
28:40 - Data-driven methods
30:32 - Future of system identification
33:40 - Question from the audience
34:19 - Advice to future students
35:50 - Skiing at a semi-professional level