NICONET was a project of the Working Group of Software (WGS), funded by the European Community BRITE-EURAM III Thematic Networks Programme, with a budget of about 750 kEUR over four years. NICONET started January 1, 1998 and finished its activities by June 30, 2002. The main objective of NICONET was the development and evaluation of numerically reliable software in control engineering and its implementation in production technologies. The key objectives accomplished by NICONET were: 

•        to intensify the research in and collaboration on Numerics in Control in Europe
•        to implement and validate high quality numerical software for systems and control
•        to coordinate the development of control related software in Europe
•        to integrate it in a unique control FORTRAN library (SLICOT)
•        to facilitate access of industrial partners to high technology software
•        to serve as an information center in the area of control numerics.

These objectives have been then pursued by the International Society NICONET, whose members are leading experts working in the field of control related numerics and software.
Part of the SLICOT software has been incorporated in the MATLAB 7 Control System Toolbox (Release 14) and the following releases.

 METALAU is a project of INRIA aiming to develop mathematical and computer science tools for automatic control, with special emphasis on off-line control systems. The project team developed a free CACSD package called Scilab. Scilab integrates a part of the SLICOT library by providing a user-friendly computational environment for the highly efficient SLICOT routines.