The world of artificial systems is reaching complexity levels that es cape human understanding. Surface traffic, electricity distribution, air planes, mobile communications, etc., are examples that demonstrate that we are running into problems that are beyond classical scientific or engi neering knowledge. There is an ongoing world-wide effort to understand these systems and develop models that can capture its behavior. The reason for this work is clear, if our lack of understanding deepens, we will lose our capability to control these systems and make they behave as we want. Researchers from...

An exposition of the interplay between the modelling of dynamic systems and the design of feedback controllers based on these models is the main goal of this book. The combination of both subjects into a cohesive development allows the consistent treatment of both problems to yield powerful new tools for the improvement of system performance. Central among the themes of this work is the observation that operation of a system in feedback with a controller exposes the areas in which the model fit is constraining the controller performance achieved. The book presents new techniques for the...