Autonomous mobile systems (AMS) are systems capable of some mobility and equipped with advanced sensor devices in order to flexibly respond to changing environmental situations, thus achieving some degree of autonomy. The purpose of this book is to contribute to some essential topics in this broad research area related to sensing and control, but not to present a complete design of an AMS. Subjects conceming knowledge based control and decision, such as moving around obstacles, task planning and diagnosis are left for future publications in this series. Research in the area of AMS has grown...

In this monograph some stability properties of linear, time-variant, discrete-time systems are summarized, where some properties are well known, some are little-known facts, and a few may be new. Models for this treatise an the asymp totical behaviour of solutions of difference equations are the commonly known excellent books of CESARI 3] and CONTI 5]. In the tables of Chapter 1 the definitions and the essen tial statements an stability of discrete-time systems are summarized, such that Chapter 2 to 5 may be regarded as explaining appendices for these tables. I am grateful to Paul Ludyk,...

The object of this monograph is to present some optimal design methods in a certain sense for obtaining linear multivariable feedback systems such that they become insensitive or robust properties. The treatment is mainly confined to linear time invariant discrete systems with the exception of the sections 3.1 and 3.3 in which it was used linear time-invariant conti nuous systems. Sensitivity and robust methods for multivariable feedback systems have been extensively studied about the last decade and the successful development has led to a much better under standing of the performance of...