Workshops

Time: 8:15am-1:00pm

Location: Grand Salon 7

This workshop’s primary objective is to connect diverse research communities and foster collaboration for the advancement of a compositional theory of decision making. As engineered systems grow in scale, heterogeneity, and interdependence, compositional approaches are becoming essential for principled design, analysis, and control.

Modern automotive systems integrate dozens of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) connected via complex networks such as CAN, FlexRay, LIN, and Ethernet. Reliable ECU bring-up, including secure software flashing, end-to-end (E2E) communication integrity checks, and primary functionality validation, is a critical prerequisite for safe and efficient software deployment.

A practical framework for authentic target-hardware validation without expensive HIL infrastructure

Modern electric vehicle development demands comprehensive validation of Electronic Control Unit (ECU) software executing on actual target processors before deployment to pre-production vehicles. Traditional Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) testing on host machines fundamentally misrepresents target hardware behavior through architectural mismatch, idealized timing assumptions, and absent compiler optimizations. Processor-in-the-Loop (PIL) testing addresses this critical validation gap by executing production-compiled code directly on target microcontrollers while maintaining simulation-like accessibility for automated test generation, real-time signal injection, and comprehensive fault management validation.

Time: 12:00pm-5:00pm

Location: Grand Salon 6

Digital twins rely on high-quality data to achieve predictive capability, yet experiments are often expensive and constrained. Optimal experimental design (OED) provides a principled framework for selecting experiments that maximally reduce model uncertainty, and can be naturally posed as an optimal control problem constrained by dynamic system models and experimental limitations.

This workshop provides hands-on training on the NSF-funded DERConnect testbed intended for researchers and industry professionals. The workshop focuses on implementation of distributed control algorithms for applications related to Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Systems, and Cybersecurity. 

This workshop, Mastering the Automotive V-Cycle: From Unit Testing to AI-Driven Validation, addresses the evolving challenges of implementing robust software development practices in the automotive industry. As vehicles transition to software-defined platforms, the Automotive V-Cycle has become a critical framework for ensuring safety, reliability, and compliance with standards such as ISO 26262 and ASPICE.

Time: 8:00am-5:00pm

Location: Prince of Wales

Optimization is necessary for advanced control – in solving for action in constraint handling model predictive control, for adjusting model coefficients in generating digital twins or empirical models from data, and for supervisory setpoint optimization.  Optimization is also essential in design of processes, equipment, and products. This full-day workshop will be a practical guide for those using multivariable, constraint handling, nonlinear optimization. 

Time: 8:50am-5:40pm

Location: Churchill A2

The rapid deployment of autonomous, learning-enabled agents is reshaping the operation of modern societal-scale systems such as mobility networks, energy infrastructures, and emerging robotic and online services.

Time: 8:30am-5:30pm

Location: Churchill A1

A question one should ask of any advanced algorithm is, “How do we make that work in a real system?” A question one should ask of any industrial control system is, “How do we apply better algorithms to this problem?” The two questions are dual sides of the same “bridging the gap” problem that has hounded control for decades.

As transportation systems transition toward electrification and intelligent connectivity, new challenges and opportunities are emerging in the modeling, control, and optimization of energy flows across multiple domains. This workshop will explore the next frontiers in automotive and transportation system energy management, focusing on how advances in control theory and computation can enable high-efficiency, low-emission, and resilient mobility systems.

Time: 9:00am-6:00pm

Location: Churchill B1

The main goal of the workshop is to highlight recent advances and developments in the role of control theory and machine learning in solving scalability problems of safe control design for MAS, and discuss some of the important open problems in the field. 

Time: 8:30am-5:00pm

Location: Grand Salon 9

With the advent of self-driving cars and delivery robots, automation promises to revolutionize the transportation sector in our modern society. Unfortunately, autonomous vehicles and robots in real-world traffic often cause collisions and experience gridlock, raising doubts about their ability to safely and efficiently interact with surrounding vehicles and pedestrians.

Time: 8:00am-6:00pm

Location: Grand Salon 12

This workshop will showcase the cutting edge of research and practice in data driven methods for the sustainable utilization of the space domain. Today, space is intricately woven into the fabric of our terrestrial existence. Assets in orbit support nearly every aspect of human life, be it agriculture, finance, communication, navigation, economic development, national security, or our many scientific endeavors. 

Time: 8:20am-5:00pm

Location: Grand Salon 3

Living systems, from individual cells to the human brain, operate through complex, dynamic processes that span multiple scales and timeframes. Understanding these processes is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. Biological and medical systems are not only nonlinear and stochastic but also deeply interconnected, making it difficult to predict behavior, design interventions, or optimize therapies.

Time: 9:00am-5:15pm

Location: Churchill C2

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) underpin the modeling, analysis, and control of complex physical systems across science and engineering, from heat transfer and fluid flow to soft robotics, traffic systems, and building energy systems.

Time: 9:00am-5:00pm

Location: Churchill B2

Following the success of the first two editions at IROS'23 and ICRA'24, the 3rd MAD-Games workshop at ACC 2026 aims to explore the latest advances in using game-theoretic and multi-agent control and learning approaches to help autonomous agents achieve safe interactions in highly dynamic environments. 

Time: 9:00am-4:30pm

Location: Grand Salon 4

This workshop will explore the challenges that arise for robotic manipulation outside of the laboratory. Real-world environments challenge every component in a control pipeline. Actuation can be especially challenging due to environmental uncertainty, unknown (and possibly compliant) physics of manipulated objects, and instabilities due to mechanical coupling during manipulation. 

Time: 8:50am-5:00pm

Location: Churchill C1

Modern engineering and AI systems increasingly rely on large networks of interacting agents, from autonomous vehicles and robotic swarms to infrastructure and communication networks. Yet, coordinating these systems safely and efficiently at scale remains one of the hardest open problems in control and learning.