A formidable optimization challenge

This week Adam participated in CyPhy 2012, a workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems. He found it interesting to see people with such varied backgrounds as programming languages, robotics, communication and bioinformatics come together in a common discussion. A particular eye-opener for Adam was how much room for improvement there can be in simulation models implemented in industrial-strength (but generic) tools such as Mathematica and Matlab. A specific model from robotics presented at the workshop would require a computation that currently takes two hours to be performed in ten milliseconds in order to be considered real-time. This is a formidable optimization challenge, one where current research can be applied to great benefit (see paper Mathematical Equations as Executable Models of Mechanical Systems) and a great example of why computer scientists and domain experts have a lot to gain from talking to each other.