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Control Engineering SIG
A programme of software development was agreed in June 1979:
- Development of a library of control engineering subroutines, SLICE, by Kingston Polytechnic (Mike Denham)
- Mounting of comprehensive dynamic simulation facilities;
- Cambridge multivariable system design package was mounted on the UMIST DEC 10 and the GEC 4070
- UMIST system design package mounted on the UMIST DEC10
- Development of a data analysis/identification package By Kingston and Warwick
Later, the ACSL simulation package was mounted on the Prime systems at UMIST , Sussex and Warwick.
The major user groups of the SIG were UMIST, Cambridge, Sheffield, Bradford, Warwick, Sussex, Bangor, Bath, Cranfield, City and Kingston.
Neil Munro of the Control Systems Centre at UMIST was involved in this and other SERC initiatives in the Control Engineering area. He died on 24 July 2004.
The SIG disbanded in 1985 when the Management Committee for the CDTCE (Computing and Design Techniques for Control Engineering) Initiative was set up.
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 grown and now (2005) consists of about 400 user-callable routines.