In this episode, our guest is Ben Recht. Ben is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.  We discuss several topics, including his research trajectory, Ben's tour of reinforcement learning, and his passion for music, among others. Check out Ben's website here: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brecht/ Outline 00:00 - Intro  01:01 - Ben predicts the birth of "inControl" 02:40 - Personal research trajectory 06:55 -...

This episode features an interview with Florian Dörfler, who is an Associate Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.  We discuss several topics, including his personal research trajectory, the influence of machine learning on control, future challenges in control theory, among others. Check out Florian's website here: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~floriand/ Outline 00:00 - Intro  01:03 - Personal research trajectory 05:57 - Influence of machine learning on...

This episode breaks the ice with a bit of the pre-history of control theory. We discuss three iconic ancestors of the science of feedback, including water clocks developed by Ktesibios, the earliest known thermostat,  and governors, a class of mechanical devices,  which,  without exaggeration, have enabled the first industrial Revolution in Britain. Outline 00:00 -Intro  01:32 - Ktesibios 06:15 - Cornelis Drebble 11:55 - Governors Episode links O. Mayr - The origins of feedback controlK....