The IEEE Control System Society encourages the formation of Technical Committees in order to focus activities around a given technical area. These groups provide the meeting point for running technical meetings, organizing invited sessions at major conferences, web sites for technical resources, and electronic newsletters.

The scope of interests of the Technical Committee on Automotive Control covers modeling, simulation, identification, estimation, control and diagnostics of present and future automotive systems. The Technical Committee has been in existence since 1999 and has presently close to 40 members, with other researchers in the field benefiting from its activities.

The automotive technology is evolving at a rapid pace and the reliance of modern powertrain and vehicle systems on electronic control is growing. With introduction of more powerful microcontrollers and vehicle communication networks, opportunities for application of advanced control algorithms are also increasing.

Benefiting from both academic and industrial participation, the committee coordinates activities towards improving understanding of challenges, problems and effective methods of controlling automotive systems. The Technical committee is not planning, at the present time, to cover the area of Intelligent Highway Transportation Systems.

Technical Activity Board on Automotive Control (TABAC) was the first name of this initiative, when it started informally by Prof. Jessy Grizzle of the University of Michigan and Prof. Luigi Glielmo of the Università of Napoli Federico II. After its formal approval by IEEE CSS (in 1999) the name has changed in Technical Committe on Automotive Controls but the acronym stuck.

The IEEE Technical Committee on Automotive Control regularly and synergistically collaborates with similar organizations of ASME and IFAC, specifically, with ASME Automotive and Transportation Systems Technical Committee and IFAC Technical Committee on Automotive Control