Report Of The Panel On Future Directions In Control Theory

The field of control provides the principles and methods used to design physical and information systems that maintain desirable performance by sensing and automatically adapting to changes in the environment. This report spells out some of the prospects for control in the current and future technological environment, describes the role the field will play in military, commercial, and scientific applications over the next decade, and recommends actions required to enable new breakthroughs in engineering and technology through the application of control research. This brief yet thorough report provides renewed vision, a detailed list of new application areas, and specific recommendations for future research directions in control, dynamics, and systems, compiled by experts in the field.

This book contains the text of the plenary lectures and the mini-courses of the European Control Conference (ECC'93) held in Groningen, the Netherlands, June 2S-July 1, 1993. However, the book is not your usu al conference proceedings. Instead, the authors took this occasion to take a broad overview of the field of control and discuss its development both from a theoretical as well as from an engineering perpective. The first essay is by the key-note speaker ofthe conference, A.G.J. Mac Farlane. It consists of a non-technical discussion of information processing and knowledge acquisition as the key features of control engineering tech nology. The next six articles are accounts of the plenary addresses. The contribution by R.W. Brockett concerns a mathematical framework for modelling motion control, a central question in robotics and vision. In the paper by M. Morari the engineering and the economic relevance of chemical process control are considered, in particular statistical quality control and the control of systems with constraints. The article by A.C.P.M. Backx is written from an industrial perspec tive. The author is director of an engineering consulting firm involved in the design of industrial control equipment. Specifically, the possibility of obtaining high performance and reliable controllers by modelling, identifi cation, and optimizing industrial processes is discussed.

This collection of selected contributions gives an account of recent developments in dynamic game theory and its applications, covering both theoretical advances and new applications of dynamic games in such areas as pursuit-evasion games, ecology, and economics. Written by experts in their respective disciplines, the chapters include stochastic and differential games; dynamic games and their applications in various areas, such as ecology and economics; pursuit-evasion games; and evolutionary game theory and applications. The work will serve as a state-of-the art account of recent advances in dynamic game theory and its applications for researchers, practitioners, and advanced students in applied mathematics, mathematical finance, and engineering.

Praise for the Series:"This book will be a useful reference to control engineers and researchers. The papers contained cover well the recent advances in the field of modern control theory."-IEEE Group Correspondence"This book will help all those researchers who valiantly try to keep abreast of what is new in the theory and practice of optimal control."--Control

This book brings together papers of well-known specialists in game theory and adjacent problems. It presents the basic results in dynamic games, stochastic games, applications of game theoretical methods in ecology and economics and methodological aspects of game theory.