This is the fourth year in a row that we organize the International Workshop on Real-Time Software (RTS’09), this time jointly with the 30th IFAC Workshop on Real-Time Programming (WRTP2009). Starting a new series of professional conferences, and making it successful, is a bit difficult nowadays, but we managed to make a continuous progress since 2006, when we held the first workshop. The numbers of accepted papers doubled each year, from barely 8 papers in the first year, to 15 papers a year later, to 30 papers last year. This time, primarily by invitations to the leading researchers who contributed to the previous workshops, we have put together a program comprising 30 papers, which have been divided into six sessions.
The 2009 Workshop in Mrągowo differs from the previous editions in that it has been sponsored by IFAC, the International Federation of Automatic Control, and is officially named the 30th in the series. We are extremely grateful to two major supporters of the idea of IFAC’s sponsorship: Prof. Matjaž Colnarič, Chairman of the IFAC Coordinating Committee on Computers, Cognition and Communication, and Prof. Marek Węgrzyn, Chairman of the Technical Committee on Computers for Control, for their continuous interest in the preparation of this workshop and its progress.
Incidentally, it turned out that this series of Workshops on Real-Time Programming (WRTP) is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, series of professional events organized under the IFAC’s sponsorship. The first one of the series took place in 1971, at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), in Harwell, UK, and was continued with an IFAC sponsorship that finally started in 1974. We were extremely lucky to get in touch with Prof. Peter Elzer, one of the founders (with Ian Pyle, Janos Gertler, and others) of the series, who accepted our invitation to present a historical perspective on the series – although, unfortunately, he was not able to participate in person.
Another important contribution to this year Workshop is the Invited Paper delivered by George Romanski, of Verocel, who gives us a view of the current state of the art in real-time embedded systems, with focus on certification. One other thing is particularly worth mentioning that the authors of contributed papers represent seventeen countries around the world. This is quite remarkable, when one takes into account that only 30 papers have been accepted. These papers constitute a program comprising six sessions: a Keynote Session and sessions on Formal Methods, Distributed Systems and Networks, System Architectures, Scheduling and Timing, and Control, Robotics and Aerospace.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the members of the International Program Committee and the Steering Committee, but in particular to the IMCSIT Conference Chair, Dr. Maria Ganzha of the Polish Academy of Sciences, for hosting the Workshop, and to Prof. Wiesław Winiecki, of the Warsaw University of Technology, for articulating the support of Polspar, the Polish National Member Organization in IFAC.
Janusz Zalewski, Program Chair
Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Florida, USA
Andrew J. Kornecki, Program Co-Chair
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
Wojciech Grega, Program Co-Chair
AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, Poland
