In this episode, our guest is Anuradha Annaswamy. Anu is the Director of the Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory and Senior Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Deparment of Mechanical Engineering.  We delve into adaptive control and its exciting history, ranging from the Brave Era to the audacious X15 tests and to modern intersections with Reinforcement Learning. Outline 02:15 - Anu's background 05:20 - What is adaptation? 08:30 - The Brave Era 15:17 - The X15 accident  23:16 - Exploration vs exploitation 28:35 - Beyond linearity and time invariance 45:05 - Adaptive control vs Reinforcement Learning 52:12 - The future of adaptive control 54:34 - Outro Episode links Anu's lab:  http://aaclab.mit.edu/ NCCR Symposium: https://tinyurl.com/bdz84p4c Book - Stable adaptive systems: https://tinyurl.com/mw4saame X-15 Flight 3-65-97: https://tinyurl.com/2kbe7nsy Paper - Adaptive Control and the NASA X-15-3 Flight Revisited: https://tinyurl.com/2p83k7ez Paper - A historical perspective of adaptive control and learning: https://tinyurl.com/yck89rcd Paper -Adaptive Control and Intersections with Reinforcement Learning: https://tinyurl.com/yc27rsyd KYP Lemma: https://tinyurl.com/mkf35jjt Persistence of excitation: https://tinyurl.com/bpfwp9n9 Dual control: https://tinyurl.com/ywduzm5x Paper - Robust adaptive control in the presence of bounded disturbances:  https://tinyurl.com/4pztx23z Paper -  Reinforcement learning is direct adaptive optimal control https://tinyurl.com/appnjzyn MRAC: https://tinyurl.com/bdzzphju Self Tuning Control: https://tinyurl.com/3mjs3skm Podcast info Podcast website: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/ Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/5n84j85j Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/4rwztj3c RSS: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1632769.rss Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/bdbvhsj6 Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/3z24yr43 Twitter: https://twitter.com/IncontrolP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/incontrol_podcast/ Acknowledgments and sponsors This episode was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research on «Dependable, ubiquitous automation» and the IFAC Activity fund. The podcast benefits from the help of an incredibly talented and passionate team. Special thanks to B. Seward, E. Cahard, F. Banis, F. Dörfler, J. Lygeros, as well as the ETH and mirrorlake studios. Music was composed by A New Element.  Support the show