To 60^th Anniversary

of the V.A.Trapeznikov Institute of Control Problems

tel: (095) 334-89-10

The V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences (until 1969, the Institute of Automation and Remote Control) was founded in 1939 under the Department of Technical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences with the aim of carrying out basic research in automatic control and designing components for automatic devices. The institute was founded and headed by Academician V.S. Kulebakin. In 1940, the institute organized the First Meeting on Automatic Control. At the beginning of the war, the institute was headed by A.F.Shorin. After his death in 1941, the institute was headed during all the war and post-war years by V.I. Kovalenkov. From 1947 to 1951, the institute was headed by Academician

B.N. Petrov. Since 1951, the institute was headed during thirty-six years by Academician V.A. Trapeznikov whose name was given to it in 1998. From 1987, the institute is headed by Member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences I.V. Prangishvili.

During its sixty years, the Institute of Control Sciences played an important role in developing the theory and practice of control. During the Great Patriotic War, the institute contributed to the victory by working on the urgent problems. It created automatic systems for inspection of mass-produced items, designed super-sensitive sensors, and developed efficient counter-mine measures. At that time, the young researchers B.N. Petrov and

V.A. Trapeznikov took active part in designing and reducing to practice a family of multiposition automatic devices for checking the size of large-caliber shell cases. Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences B.S. Sotskov established at the institute a counter-mine center and headed it.

The first post-war decades were marked by intensive development of the theory and practice of control, identification and formulation of the lines of research that seemed to be promising for solving the urgent problems arising in all industries of the rapidly recovering economy. It is not an overstatement to say that at that time the institute was a kind of nucleus where new revolutionary concepts of the control theory, lines of research, methods and procedures for realizing the most topical applications of automatic control were conceived. It is difficult, if possible at all, to list all lines of development of the control theory that were born at the institute; one can only recall the most important of them.

In 1939, the head of the institute's laboratory of automatic control Prof.

G.V. Shchipanov posed the problem of compensating perturbations in automatic controllers. He asserted that the process of control can be organized so as to eliminate the error of control under the action of perturbations. It is only natural that this revolutionary idea gave rise to an animated discussion among the researchers and that the institute was at its center. An outstanding mathematician, Academician N.N. Luzin who at that time was with the institute joined the discussion and proved in mathematically strict terms that the problem of compensation is solvable. He introduced the term "invariance," which still exists in the control theory as "invariance theory." Academician V.S. Kulebakin developed further the invariance theory and demonstrated by way of particular examples of automatic devices and instrumentation that the principle of invariance is one of the most important principles for their realization. Academician B.N. Petrov suggested a criterion for reliability of the invariance conditions which was later named the Petrov two-channel principle. The invariance theory remains until now a topical and promising domain of the control theory which is actively pursued by the research officers of the institute, as well as researchers in this country and abroad. In particular, an outstanding modern researcher W.M. Wonham pays much attention to the invariance theory in his geometrical approach to the multivariable control systems.

The invitation extended to Academician A.A. Andronov, one of the founders of nonlinear oscillations theory, marked a special" Andronov" period in the institute's history known for the seminars held in the 1940s. The enthusiastic and intense atmosphere of the seminars gave rise to the then-new areas of research such as estimation of the performance of control processes (Prof. A.A. Fel'dbaum, Academician Ya.Z. Tsypkin, and others) and method of integral estimates (A.A. Fel'dbaum and others) which marked the first steps toward the Letov–Kalman methods of analytical design.

In the 1940s-1950s Prof. A.A. Fel'dbaum headed the actively progressing study of optimal control. Its results gave rise to a powerful independent area of research which is until now one of the pivotal areas of the control theory.

In the 1950s, Prof. A.G. Butkovskii and his collaborators formulated and investigated an independent domain of the theory of optimal control which was internationally recognized as the "optimal control of distributed-parameter systems." In 1974, he was awarded the

A.A. Andronov prize of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences for his series of works on control of the distributed-parameter systems.

In the 1940s, studies of the structural theory of relay-contact devices took shape at the laboratory of Prof. M. A. Gavrilov. In 1958, he was awarded the P. M. Yablochkov prize of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences for his studies on the theory of relay devices. Later on, this line of research transformed into amore general problem of reliability analysis and technical diagnosis of the control systems which is associated mostly with the name of Corresponding Member P.P.Parkhomenko.

In the 1950s, an institute's researcher Academician S.V. Emel'yanov formulated the principle of variable structure of the automatic control systems which gave rise to a new original area of research in the control theory. In 1972, Academician S.V.Emel'yanov and Prof. V.I. Utkin were awarded the Lenin Prize for a series of studies on the theory of variable-structure systems.

Analysis of the dynamic precision of motion of the control systems under random actions was one of the main lines of research that were actively pursued at the institute throughout its history. This area is closely associated with the names of renowned scientists Prof. V.V. Solodovnikov and Academician V.S. Pugachev.

The problem of controlling nonstationary plants, that is, plants whose characteristics vary in the course of their operation, became urgent in the 1950s. Two new lines of research that were concerned with the control of such plants were conceived at the institute. They were named the adaptive searching and nonsearching control and headed, respectively, by Prof. A.A. Feld'baum, and Academician B.N.Petrov. The need for controlling aircraft and spacecraft gave rise to an original line of research in the adaptive control theory, the so-called nonsearching self-adjusting systems. Is was pursued by Prof. V.Yu. Rutkovsky and his collaborators. Several researches of the institute headed by Academician B.N. Petrov were awarded the USSR State Prize for their studies of the nonsearching adaptive systems. More recently, Academician Ya. Z. Tsypkin joined the studies of adaptive control and together with his collaborators obtained some fundamental results.

Control of non stationary plants gave rise to another topical problem which evolved into the identification theory that was actively pursued under the leadership of Prof. N.S.Raibman. More recently, Academician Ya.Z. Tsypkin and his colleagues developed further the identification theory and created a new area of research that was called the robust control. In this area, the institute recently obtained important results.

A section of the control theory which concerns the theory of discrete automatic systems and encompasses the pulse, relay, and digital control systems was created at the institute at the 1950s.The work in this area that was headed by Academician Ya.Z.Tsypkin gave some fundamental results. In 1960, Academician Ya. Z. Tsypkin was awarded the Lenin Prize for his works on the theory of pulse and relay systems.

At the early 1960s, the institute begins to study the processes of control in the socioeconomic systems. he notion of active system, that is, a system which consists of groups of agents having their own objective and subjective interests in the job that they execute, was put forward. Methods for description of the organizational systems and control mechanisms used in them were developed. In 1989, Prof. V.N. Burkov was awarded the USSR State Prize for designing computerized systems for control of industrial complexes.

Since the early 1960s, the institute was actively engaged in studying the problems of industrial automation. Some of the first process control systems in this country were designed with the direct participation and scientific leadership of the institute. In 1984,Corresponding Member O. I. Aven and Profs. A. G. Mamikonov and V. L. Epshtein were awarded the USSR State Prize for designing and introducing into wide practice the computerized management systems.

During all years of its existence, the institute actively works on creating new principles of measurements, instrumentation, and automation facilities. The names of Corresponding Member B. S. Sotskov and Prof. D. I. Ageikin are of international renown. The State System of Industrial Instrumentation and Means of Automation(GSP), which was initiated by a team headed by Corresponding Member B.S. Sotskov, marked a significant international event in the professional equipment.

A special place in the studies of the institute belongs to pneumatics and hydraulics. The Unified System of Components of Industrial Pneumatic Automatics (USEPPA) is used until now as the main set of components for the national pneumatic professional equipment. In 1964, some of the researchers of the institute were awarded the Lenin Prize for the development and wide industrialization of the USEPPA.

The name of the institute is closely related with the development of architectures of multiprocessor computer systems with central and distributed controls. They provided the basis for designing and producing on commercial basis the PS-2000 and PS-3000 multiprocessor computer systems.

It would be impossible to list all works of the institute that are of interest. For example, much attention is paid to the control of complex biological objects and processes; the theory and applications of artificial intelligence, control on the basis of neural computer networks, as well as on the basis of new physical approaches to the concepts of time, matter, and space are actively developed, consideration is given to the problems involved in the interpenetrating of the theory and processes of control and computerization, and so on.

The theoretical results obtained by the institute found wide use in the control systems used in diverse industries. It is impossible to mention briefly even the most important contributions of the institute. We note only some points that correspond to orientation of the journal. The institute contributed to solving problems of control that are associated with utilization of the outer space such as launching of the first artificial Earth satellite, first manned space flight, first lunar landing of the automatic station, Soviet-American space mission within the "Soyuz-Apollo" program, flights of the "Salut" orbital space stations and "Soyuz" spacecraft, international space expeditions within the "Intercosmos" program, and so on.

The institute was directly involved in the practicalization of its results at all stages of designing the control system of modern submarines, ice-breakers, and large ships, as well as aircraft, spacecraft, and missiles.

In the recent years, the institute pays much attention to the problems of controlling large-scale technical, social, economic, biological, and other objects that are weakly formalized. Since they are weakly structured systems with fuzzy and contradictory goals, new nontraditional approaches to their control are required. This need is all the more urgent because the XXIst century seems to put on the agenda the problems of controlling precisely these weakly formalized systems and the institute has accumulated an appreciable amount of knowledge on the control of such nontraditional systems.