Wireless control: Retrospective and open vistas

The convergence of wireless networks and control engineering has been a technological driver since the beginning of this century. It has significantly contributed to a wide set of emerging applications, such as smart homes, robot swarms, connected autonomous vehicles, and wireless process automation. Envisioning further integration and developments in wireless control, in this paper we provide an overview of past results and present some perspective on the future of the area. Rather than extensively reviewing existing results, we provide a handbook for practitioners who want to tackle and contribute to wireless control. First, we introduce the key types of wireless networks for control applications pointing out their main strengths and their main bottlenecks. Then, we introduce the main technical approaches for the analysis and the design of wireless control showing both their basic ideas and their applicability. Finally, we provide a vision for the future of wireless control and we try to outline the main directions and research questions of the next decade.