Pre-conference workshops

For the EuroGNC conference edition in Madrid, hosted by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, two full-day pre-conference tutorial workshops will be organized on 4 May 2026:

  1. Control Barrier Functions in Aerospace: From Foundations to Real-World Applications
  2. A Short Course on Parameter Identification and Estimation for Aerospace Systems

Both workshops are strongly education-oriented and aim to enhance structured knowledge transfer in advanced control techniques that are highly relevant to modern aerospace systems but are not yet systematically covered in many curricula. The target audience includes PhD students, advanced Master students, early-career researchers, and professionals from industry working in aerospace guidance, navigation, and control.

Registration Fee: 125 EUR (more info)

Important information:

  • Participants must select one workshop
  • Each workshop is limited to 30 attendees

Control Barrier Functions in Aerospace:
From Foundations to Real-World Applications

Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) provide a rigorous framework for enforcing safety and state constraints in control systems with formal forward invariance guarantees. While well established in control theory, their systematic adoption in aerospace guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) is still emerging, despite strong relevance to flight envelope protection, collision avoidance, spacecraft constraints, and safety-critical autonomy.

This full-day workshop features invited tutorial contributions from leading researchers at ETH Zurich, University of Oxford, Rutgers University, University of Colorado Boulder, CRAN (Université de Lorraine), NOVA University Lisbon, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Virginia Tech, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The program combines theoretical foundations with application-oriented perspectives, concluding with a panel discussion on open challenges and future directions.

The workshop is education-oriented and designed for PhD students, advanced Master’s students, early-career researchers, and industry professionals in aerospace GNC seeking structured insight into modern safety-critical control techniques.

Format: Hybrid (in-person & virtual). In-person participation is strongly recommended for optimal learning and interaction.

Technical program: please refer to the workshop website.

A Short Course on Parameter Identification and Estimation for Aerospace Systems

This 7-hours course provides a graduate/professional-level introduction to system identification and parameter estimation for aerospace systems, covering from helicopters and drones to aircraft and launchers. Through a combination of theoretical lectures and practical/real case studies, participants will learn to apply both data-driven (black-box) and physics-based (grey-box) techniques to improve the accuracy of aerospace system models, with an emphasis on real-world applications and challenges.

Intended audience:

  • Graduate students in aerospace, systems, mechanical, or electrical engineering programs;
  • Professional engineers working in the aerospace industry;
  • Researchers interested in advanced system identification methods and their aerospace applications.

Prerequisite knowledge

  • Basic knowledge of control systems, system dynamics, and modeling;
  • Familiarity with MATLAB or similar software for data analysis is helpful but not mandatory.

Learning objectives:

  1. Understand the state of art and practice for aerospace systems’ identification and estimation.
  2. Learn about black-box (subspace identification) and grey-box (LFT/LPV modeling) approaches.
  3. Gain practical understanding on the application of these techniques to real-world aerospace systems, including helicopter dynamics, launcher modeling, and multirotor drone systems.

Organizers:

  • Andrés Marcos (AME, UC3M), email: anmarcos@ing.uc3m.es
  • Marco Lovera (ML, POLIMI), email: marco.lovera@polimi.it

Schedule: