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C D C P R E V I E W
C D C P R E V I E W
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2010.936432
CDC 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia
F
ollowing two consecutive years out side the United States, the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) will return to the Unit-ed States in 2010. The 49th IEEE CDC will take place December 15–19, 2010, at the Hilton Atlanta, the fi rst time the fl agship conference of the IEEE Con-trol Systems Society (CSS) has been held in the state of Georgia.The city of Atlanta, made famous in the classic civil war film Gone with the Wind, is the state capital and larg-est city in Georgia with over a half mil-lion inhabitants. The 28-county Atlanta metropolitan area has over 5 million inhabitants, making it the eighth larg-est metropolitan region in the United States. Atlanta is the fifth most popular convention city in the United States, after Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The Hilton Atlanta is conveniently located within walking distance of many attractions, such as Centennial Olympic Park, the World of Coca-Cola, the CNN center, the Georgia Dome, Underground Atlanta, and the Georgia Aquarium. Hartsfield-Jackson International airport is only 11 km from downtown and is a major gateway for international flights, easily reached from most major cities in the world.
The 49th IEEE CDC will feature the presentation of contributed and invited papers as well as tutorial sessions and workshops. In addition to standard oral presentations, the conference will feature interactive presentations.
THE HILTON ATLANTA
The Hilton Atlanta, located at 255 Courtland Street in downtown Atlanta,
completed a multimillion dollar reno-vation in 2009 and is now the premier convention hotel in Atlanta with over 1200 rooms. The Hilton Atlanta also has one of the city’s best restaurants, Nikolai’s Roof. As the second lon-gest standing fine dining restaurant
in Atlanta, Nikolai’s has received the coveted AAA four Diamond Award for 20 consecutive years. Guests can dine on exquisitely prepared French and Russian dishes while enjoying panoramic views of the Atlanta sky-line. The Hilton also has a Trader Vic’s and several café’s.
SOME HISTORY
Native American cultures were already present in Georgia at the end of the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago. The earliest known inhabitants belonged to the Clovis culture, named for the town in New Mexico where their char-acteristic projectile points were first discovered. By the time European set-tlers arrived in North America, the Indians of Georgia and other areas in the Southeast were organized into chiefdoms and had attained the high-est level of political organization in North America, after the Aztec and
Atlanta Hilton Hotel.
Mayan civilizations in pres-ent-day Mexico. The Cherokee and Creek Indians formed the most significant Native Amer-ican groups and played sig-nificant roles in the colonial history of Georgia.
Georgia was the last of the original 13 American colo-nies to be founded, a full 50 years after the founding of the 12th colony, Pennsylva-nia. As the youngest and least developed of the 13 colonies, Georgia played a relatively minor role in the American Revolutionary War, but by 1860 Georgia was the most populous southern state in the country thanks to the development of the railroads, becoming known as the “Empire of the South.”
Present-day Atlanta is located on the site of a Native American village called Standing Peachtree. Fol-lowing the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation in the 1830s, the Western and Atlantic Rail road was built to provide a trade route to
the Midwest. The settlement around the eastern terminus of the rail line was named “Terminus” in 1837. The chief engineer of the Georgia Rail-road suggested that the name be changed to Atlantica-Pacifica, which was shortened to Atlanta, and the city of Atlanta was incorporated on December 29, 1847.
During the Civil War, At lanta was an important railroad hub for the Confederacy. The city was burned to the ground by Union General William Tecum-seh Sherman in advance of his infamous “March to the Sea,” which drove the final nail into the coffin of the old South. The rebuilding of Atlanta following the war was slow since Georgia itself was the last of the former Confederate states to be read-mitted to the Union in 1870.
Today Atlanta boasts a thriving economy, ranking third
behind New York and Houston in the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered within the city limits. CNN, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and United Parcel Service are among the largest and best known Atlanta-based companies. The largest employer in
Atlanta is Delta Air Lines, which itself recently became the world’s largest airline company. As a result, Harts-field-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world’s busiest airport and a key element in Atlanta’s eco-nomic growth.
Atlanta is also home to more than 30 colleges and universities, among them, the Georgia Institute of Technology, which is consis-tently ranked among the top ten engineering schools in the United States, Georgia State University, Emory University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College.
SLAVERY AND
CIVIL RIGHTS
The history of Atlanta is inti-mately connected to the history of slavery and civil rights in the United States. Ironically, Georgia was the only North American colony in which slavery was explicitly banned at the outset, along with rum, lawyers, and Catholics [1]. The ban on slavery was lifted in 1751, and the plan-tation economy, based on the production of rice and cotton, rapidly expanded. It was during a visit to a plan-tation in Georgia in 1793 that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which was responsible, more than any-thing else, for the perpetu-ation of the institution of slavery well into the 19th century. Although the American Civil War ended slavery, the economic plight and civil rights of blacks remained poor. In 1908, an amendment to the state constitu-tion established literacy and prop-erty requirements for voting, which effectively disenfran-chised many blacks and poor whites. This period of disen-franchisement, together with racial seg regation of public facilities, was referred to as the Jim Crow era; this era lasted until the 1960s. Into this environment was born Atlanta’s most famous native son, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose Southern Chris-tian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was one of the first grassroots efforts to challenge and ultimately end racial seg-regation in the south.
The Operating Committee for the 2010 CDC is: General Chair: Mark Spong
Program Chair: Fathi Ghorbel Publications Chair: LK Mestha Finance Chair: Warren Dixon Workshop Chair: Jorge Cortes
Vice Chair for Invited Sessions: Magnus Egerstedt Vice Chair for Interactive and Tutorial Sessions:
Gangbing Song
Student Activities Chair: Kristi Morgansen Local Arrangements Chair: Fumin Zhang Registration Chair: Ann Rundell
Publicity Chair: Marcia O’Malley Exhibits Chair: Bonnie Heck Ferri
CDC 2010 Operating Committee
Martin Luther King, Jr. Center.
Atlanta has a subtropical
climate with hot, humid summers
Bonnie Ferrie with family members Kevin, Al, Brian, and Katie on vacation in Norway.
Gangbin Song. Kristi Morgansen.
Jorge Cortes.
Magnus Egerstedt, his children
Annika and Olivia, and a friend. LK Mestha. Mark and Lila Spong in Acapulco. Mark
is the general chair of CDC 2010.
Warren Dixon, with his wife Lisa and their children Isaac and Ethan in Jackson, South Carolina.
Ann Rundell and her son Ashwin
Balakrishnan. Marcia O’Malley. Fathi Ghorbel.
Fumin Zhang showing off the Georgia Tech mascot.
WEATHER
Atlanta has a subtropical cli-mate with hot, humid sum-mers and relatively mild winters. December tem-peratures average around 55 ºF (13 ºC) although occa-sional warm fronts can bring spring-like temperatures in the 60s (teens) and 70s (20s), while Arctic air masses can result in temperatures in the single digits (215 ºC). Atlanta’s climate is generally milder than other southern cities at the same latitude due to its relatively higher elevation (1000 ft or 320 m above sea level). Rainy days number around ten on aver-age in the month of Decem-ber. Unusual snow storms occurred in February 2010.
WHAT TO DO
IN ATLANTA
Downtown Atlanta under-went a major revitalization as a result of the 1996 sum-mer Olympics and is now a major tourist destination as
well as a convention city. More than 37 million people visited Atlanta in 2007, according to Forbes magazine. Near Centennial Olympic Park, a short walk from the Hilton Atlanta, is the world’s largest aquarium, the Geor-gia Aquarium, which opened in 2005. Adjacent to the Georgia Aquarium is the World of Coca Cola, which opened in 2007. Underground Atlanta, a huge underground shopping and entertain-ment complex, and the CNN Center are also nearby.
Museums and attractions in the city include the Atlanta History Center, the Carter Center, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center, the National Historic Site, the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum, the historic house museum Rhodes Hall, and the Margaret Mitch-ell House and Museum. Children’s museums include the Fernbank Sci-ence Center and Imagine It! Children’s Museum of Atlanta.
Atlanta boasts numerous profes-sional sports teams, including the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Atlanta Falcons football team, and Atlanta Hawks basketball team. Classical music and theater are well represented by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera, the Atlanta Ballet, and the Fox Theater. Notable art galleries include the High Museum of Art, the Center for Puppetry Arts, the Atlanta Institute for the Arts, and the Georgia Museum of Contemporary Art.
For more information about these attractions, I suggest visiting the Web site “50 Fun Things to Do in Atlanta” [2], from which I gathered the addi-tional facts below.
CENTENNIAL OLYMPIC PARK
This park was conceived and built for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in what had been a run-down area of Atlanta. Today, this park covers 21 acres
in the heart of the revitalized downtown and features the Fountain of Rings, the world’s largest interactive fountain utilizing the Olym-pic symbol of five inter-connecting rings. Control systems play an important role in this fountain, which contains 251 (why not 256?) computer-controlled water jets, 410 fog jets, 1004 light bulbs, and miles of under-ground water pipes. The park itself contains 800,000 bricks and contains granite from each of the five con-tinents represented in the Olympic Games.
THE GEORGIA
AQUARIUM
The Georgia Aquarium, adja-cent to Centennial Olympic Park, was the result of a $250 million gift from Ber-nie Marcus, the cofounder of Home Depot, which is headquartered in Atlanta. In addition to being the world’s largest aquarium, the Georgia Aquarium also has more animals than any other aquarium and contains over 8 million gallons of water in over 60 exhibits. One of my favorites is the beluga whale tank, whose view-ing window opens to a large ballroom used to host receptions and events.
WORLD OF COCA-COLA
Next to the Georgia Aquarium is the World of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, as everyone knows, was invented in 1886
Centennial Olympic Park with children playing in the fountain.
The exterior of the Georgia Aquarium.
by Atlanta pharmacist John Pember-ton. Its popularity quickly soared in the United States, and by 1895 Coca-Cola plants had been built in Chicago, Dal-las, and Los Angeles. Coca-Cola became a truly international business during the Second World War when General Dwight D. Eisenhower requested the construction of ten bottling plants in Europe. The World of Coca-Cola ex -plores the history of Coke and contains
a fully functional bottling line as well as a multisensory 4D theater, that is, a 3D theater with moving seats.
UNDERGROUND ATLANTA
During the first part of the 20th cen-tury, a series of concrete bridges or viaducts was built across the railroad tracks in downtown Atlanta. A linear mall was constructed at bridge level to create a series of public plazas. This
design effectively elevated Atlanta’s downtown street system one level as merchants began moving their stores to the second level. The old store front area below was left for storage and service and became what is now called “Underground Atlanta.” Today, Underground Atlanta contains retail shops, specialty and gift shops, restau-rants, and nightlife entertainment.
STONE MOUNTAIN PARK
For those interested in a day trip suit-able for children, Stone Mountain Park is located 16 miles east of downtown Atlanta on 3200 acres. Here you can ride a scenic train around the mountain or take a skyride to the top to view the Stone Mountain Carving. Attractions
for children include a 4D movie theater, miniature golf, games, and winter sled-ding. The dates of the 2010 CDC also coin-cide with the special Christmas events, including a laser light show and parades.
REFERENCES
[1] New Georgia Encyclopedia [Online]. Avail-able: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/ Home.jsp
[2] 50 fun things to do in Atlanta [Online]. Avail-able: http://www.atlanta.net/50fun/
[3] Georgia aquarium [Online]. Available: http:// www.georgiaaquarium.org/
[4] Wikipedia [Online]. Available: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta
[5] 49th IEEE CDC Web page [Online]. Available: http://www.ieeecss.org/CAB/conferences/ cdc2010/index.php
Mark W. Spong
CDC 2010 General Chair
Stone Mountain Carving through trees.
Natural Natation
F
ish, for example, exhibit many different types of self-organizing behavior—they swim in schools that seem to have common pur-pose and direction, turning and moving in unison without colliding, they hunt, flee predators, and spawn as groups. Who is directing the traffic? If we take a fish’s eye view, there is no ‘school’ or directed group activity at all. There is merely a set of simple individual behav-iors evolved under pressures of predation. A fish that swims off alone gets eaten, while a fish that keeps bumping into schoolmates wastes energy. Schooling benefits the individual (he does not fall prey) and the school (it uses energy efficiently, reduces drag, can spawn and maintain its population). But the ‘school’ itself as an entity is nonex-istent: we project this notion from the outside to help us understand fish behavior. Fish neither know they are in formation nor intention-ally swim together. The apparent water ballet is unplanned, com-pletely unlike the behavior of Olympic synchronized swimmers.—When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge, by K. David Harrison, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 49.
