  Logic is playing an increasingly important role in the engineering of
real-time, hybrid, and cyber-physical systems, but mostly in the form of
posterior verification and high-level analysis. The core methodology in the
design of real-world systems consists mainly of control theory and numerical
analysis, and has remained mostly free of logic and formal approaches. As a
result, besides facing extreme difficulty in guaranteeing the reliability of
these systems, engineers are also missing out the computational power of
logic-based methods that has greatly advanced in the past decades. To change
this situation, we need a logical and computational foundation for control
theory. The name "descriptive control theory" emphasizes the overarching theme
of using logic to express, analyze, and solve problems in control theory. If
the program is successfully carried out, logical approaches will significantly
extend existing engineering methods towards a unified methodology for handling
nonlinear and hybrid systems, and bring design automation and reliability to an
unprecedented level in the broad field of engineering.
