Successful Industry/Academia Cooperation: From Simple via Complex to Lucid Solutions

The control literature is rich on impressive applications of advanced control, and within almost any industrial sector there are numerous examples of successful advanced control applications. Nevertheless, there is a widespread belief that there is still a wide potential for increased cooperation between academia and industry within this area.
In this position paper, it is advocated that one of the enablers for successful cooperation between industry and academia within the control area is a proper framework for cooperation projects between companies and universities.
Some suggestions for such a framework based on elaborate experience are proposed. In particular, the paper points to the importance of designing projects with project time explicitly scheduled for a phase based on reflection of complex academic solutions. In this phase, the objective is to mimic the behavior of the complex controllers by less complex but industrially feasible solutions. The proposed approach is illustrated by three case studies of successful industrial/academic cooperation.