A dead-time compensation control uses an element (also called a Smith predictor) to predict how changes made now by the controller will affect the controlled variable in the future.

Researchers attempting to develop non-intrusive brain-machine interfaces are interested in this, as are system analysis, operations research, and epistemology (e.g. the Smith predictor has been suggested in the discussion).

S. Munir and W.J. Book (Georgia Institute of Technology) used a Smith predictor, a Kalman filter and an energy regulator to perform teleoperation through the Internet.