ACA 2016

Dear ACA 2016 participants,

On behalf of the National Organizing Committee and the International Programme Committee, I welcome you all to the 20th IFAC ACA Symposium in Sherbrooke. We have prepared an interesting programme of 82 papers organized into 11 regular sessions and 3 invited sessions, covering a wide range of topics including Guidance, Navigation & Control of Spacecraft, Aircraft, Helicopters, Launchers and UAV; Filtering, Estimation, and Identification; Fault Detection; Trajectory Design and Trajectory Optimisation. Five plenary sessions will address the theory and practice of automatic control in aerospace, from model-based system design and adaptive control of infinite dimensional systems to actual flight experience such as the space autonomy innovations on the PROBA missions, the navigation challenges of the Rosetta Mission and the guidance, navigation and control challenges of landing on Mars. We will also honour the best three papers contributed by students. Industrial visits to Bell Helicopter and Bombardier Aerospace in Montreal as well as technical visits to the Interdisciplinary Institute for Technological Innovation (3IT), the Advanced Technology Centre (CTA) and NGC Aerospace’s Laboratory will complete the technical programme.

An equally exciting social programme awaits you, starting with a welcome reception at the conference venue on Sunday evening, the Mayor’s reception at the City Hall, an enchanting excursion in the Forest Lumina and the symposium banquet on the Grand Cru, a luxury boat cruising on Lake Memphremagog. These activities are a small subset of all the activities you can enjoy during your stay. With its two rivers that run through the city, with its pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths that follow their course and with its numerous parks and green spaces, Sherbrooke provides a variety of recreational activities in harmony with its natural environment. Around Sherbrooke, in the scenic Eastern Townships, you will discover mountains, forests, rivers and lakes, with charming towns and villages, golf courses and vineyards, mountain trails and natural parks, providing a large variety of outdoor attractions and activities for the whole family. Do not hesitate to ask for information and directions to our staff and to Destination Sherbrooke, a local organisation that will be pleased to help you with the planning of your visits and activities.

I therefore invite you to benefit from these various technical and social activities in order to meet your colleagues, discover common interests, initiate collaborations and contribute to the advancement of knowledge and applications in automatic control for aerospace systems.

I conclude with my sincere expression of gratitude to the members of the National Organizing Committee, the associate editors, the organizers of invited sessions, the authors, the plenary speakers, the reviewers and the sponsors who contributed their hard work, dedication and financial support in order to make the preparation of ACA 2016 a success.

Jean de Lafontaine
Chair, ACA 2016 Symposium