Control Engineering SIG

Control Engineering was an early user of interactive computing predating the formation of ICF. An Interdata 8/32 existed in the Control Engineering Department at Sheffield University and 45% share of that machine was purchased by ICF early on in return for useful enhancements. Mike Sterling ran the Sheffield Control Engineering Department early on before moving to the Chair in Control Engineering at Durham University. In 1990 he became Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University. He was knighted in the 2012 Birthday Honours List.

Neil Munro of the Control Systems Centre at UMIST was involved with the SIG and other SERC initiatives in the Control Engineering area. He chaired the SERC's Control & Instrumentation Sub-Committee from 1983-1985. He died on 24 July 2004.

The Control Engineering SIG itself started rather later than most of the SIGs. A programme of software development was finally agreed in June 1979:

1. Development of a library of control engineering subroutines: SLICE, by Kingston Polytechnic under Mike Denham who later chaired the SIG;
2. Mounting of comprehensive dynamic simulation facilities;
3. Mounting of the Cambridge University multi-variable system design package (J M Maciejowski and A G J MacFarlane);
4. Mounting of the UMIST system design package
5. Development of a data analysis/identification package by Kingston Polytechnic and Warwick University.

The major user groups associated with the SIG were UMIST, Cambridge, Sheffield, Bradford, Warwick, Sussex, Bangor, Bath, Cranfield, City and Kingston. Two staff were supported by the SIG at Kingston Polytechnic.

ACSL

ACSL (Advanced Continuous Simulation Language) was mounted on the Prime systems at UMIST, Sussex and Warwick with user support provided by staff at Warwick and Sussex Universities.

CLADP

The Cambridge multi-variable system design package (finally called CLADP: Cambridge Linear Analysis and Design Programs) was mounted initially on the UMIST DEC 10, the GEC 4070 at Cambridge and later a Prime 550 with support from Cambridge

UMIST Computer Aided Control System Design and Synthesis Suites

These were mounted on the UMIST DEC10 with support from UMIST. See further details here

SLICE (Software Library In Control Engineering)

The programme of work was for three years, carried out by two applications programmers based at Kingston Polytechnic. It covered the full range of algorithms used in controller design packages, implemented with numerically efficient and stable computational methods. Further details can be found here.

The SIG disbanded in 1985 when the Management Committee for the CDTCE (Computing and Design Techniques for Control Engineering) Initiative was set up. ECSTASY (Environment for Control System Theory, Analysis & SYnthesis) was developed by a team under Prof Neil Munro as part of that initiative.

The SLICE library of subroutines was made available through NAG. It initially contained about 40 user-callable control routines. The Benelux Working Group on Software (WGS) later developed a control library called SYCOT. In the late 1980s, NAG combined SLICE and SYCOT to produce a new library called SLICOT which was released in 1991 and a second version in 1993 by which time it consisted of about 90 routines. Version 3 of SLICOT was released in 1997. It has continued to grow and by 2005 consisted of about 400 user-callable routines. The library is currently (2018) marketed by slicot.org.

CLADP was later marketed by COMPEDA Ltd.