Welcome to SIDRA 2021

The S.I.D.R.A. PhD Summer School is a one-week event organised every year by S.I.D.R.A., the Italian Control Systems Society. The Summer School usually takes place in Bertinoro, Forlì-Cesena, Italy. Our current plan is to organise the School in person, in Bertinoro, respecting all the rules to cope with the pandemic, but if the situation will not allow it, the School will be held online.

Since the first edition, in 1997, the school has been a meeting place for PhD students, post-graduate and researchers, to be introduced to classical as well as to emerging control theory, enriched by practical case studies and applications. Besides the learning experience, the school also has the ambition of providing a stimulating environment for PhD students to meet and establish professional relationships, collaborations, and know-how exchanges. Every year, two hot topics related to control systems theory/applications are presented, and the participants to the school have the opportunity to suggest the topics for the next year. The summer school is primarily intended for, but not restricted to, PhD, post-graduate, and researcher candidates in the Control Systems and Automatica fields. Participants coming from other disciplines may also benefit from the school depending on the topics discussed. The school success encountered in these years and the distinguished international guests, involved a progressive internationalization of the school that now opens up to receive applications from all the European PhD students.

This year themes

This year the school comprises an intensive programme of lectures and seminars organised around two topical research themes.

The first theme, developed in the first half of the week, concerns about "Game Theory and Network Systems" coordinated and taught by professors Giacomo Como e Fabio Fagnani (Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy)

The second theme, presented in the second half of the week, focuses on “Modeling and Control of Soft Robots“, coordinated by professors Antonio Bicchi (University of Pisa and IIT, Pisa, Italy), Alessandro De Luca (University of Rome, La Sapienza, Rome, Italy), Bruno Siciliano (University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy) and taught by professors Cosimo Della Santina (TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands) and Stanislao Grazioso (University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy)

More in details the “Game Theory and Network Systems“ course starts from the basic concepts and notation from classical competitive game theory and continues focusing on network games and learning dynamics and their convergence properties. Particular emphasis will be on mechanism design. Starting from problems such as constraint satisfaction, resource allocation, Bayesian inference, the course will show how to design a game and a learning mechanism to solve them in an efficient and distributed fashion. Click here for more info on the course programme.

The “Modeling and Control of Soft Robots“ course will deal with the modeling of soft robots first basing on the physics and the continuum formulation of soft robot dynamics, then exploiting control oriented discretization strategies. Regarding control, the dynamic control in the fully actuated approximation will be presented using both feedforward and feedback strategies. Moreover the course will cover  the underactuated case where the quasi-static and dynamic control problems will be illustrated. Click here for more info on the course programme.

A brief guide to surf the site

Click on the main menu item More Info to have information about how the telematic lectures will be held and instructions on how to follow them,

Click on the main menu item Registration to have information and instructions on how to apply to the school and the requested fee. Here you can find the pre-registration form to be filled to be admitted to the SIDRA summer school

Click on the main menu item Course Outline to have a look at the school programmes.

Click on the main menu item Course Material to download the material of the school and the homeworks. The material will be provided few weeks before the first school day whereas the homework will be available at the end of the school (for taking a certified exam if required by the home university).

Use the links on the bottom of the page to communicate directly with the Centro Universitario di Bertinoro, that manage the centre where the school take place (only for questions not answered on this site).

On the bottom of the page the email addresses of the coordinators of the school, Prof. Claudio Melchiorri and Prof. Maria Elena Valcher, and of the contact person at the Centro Universitario di Bertinoro, Monica Michelacci.

Please, contact Monica Michelacci for questions related to accommodation and logistics, Prof. Claudio Melchiorri or Prof. Maria Elena Valcher for questions related to the School and the courses.