Preface to Advances in Control Theory and Applications

The preface refers to the presentations of research results as well as informal discussions about ideas and problems, case-studies, limitations and potentials of existing and emerging theories during the “meeting-in-the-fortress” organized in Bertinoro, Italy, by the “CASY-Centre of Research on Complex Automated Systems” of the University of Bologna, during the week May 22-26, 2006. This workshop enjoyed the participation of Frank Allgower, Karl Astrom,Tamer Basar, Claudio Bonivento, Marco Campi, Tryphon Georgiou, Alessandro Giua, Lino Guzzella, Alberto Isidori, Arthur Krener, Stéphane Lafortune, Lorenzo Marconi, Manfred Morari, Steve Morse, Anibal Ollero, Laurent Praly, Anders Rantzer, Giorgio Rizzoni, Carlo Rossi, Kurt Schlacher, Bruno Siciliano, Marcel Staroswiecki, Andrew Teel, Roberto Tempo, Arijan van der Schaft, Yutaka Yamamoto, Sandro Zampieri, and of a number of post doctoral fellows and PhD students currently working at CASY, http://www.casy.deis.unibo.it . Out of the twenty five lectures given in Bertinoro, fifteen are reported here in written revised form, aiming at offering the identification of new theoretical developments and research directions, as needed by recent progresses in application and problems which are still looking for a theoretical support and effective rigorous solutions. In this respect, "Advances in Control Theory and Applications" is aimed at a broad audience of PhD students, researchers and skilled professionals operating in different technical areas where control issues are relevant. The chapters deal with: Modeling and Control of Autonomous Helicopters.- Efficient Quantization in the Average Consensus Problem.- Human-Robot Interaction Control Using Force and Vision.- A Dissipation Inequality for the Minimum Phase Property of Nonlinear Control Systems.- Input Disturbance Suppression for Port-Hamiltonian Systems: an Internal Model Approach.- A Systems Theory View of Petri Nets.- Wireless Sensing with Power Constraints.- The Important State Coordinates of a Nonlinear System.- On Decentralized and Distributed Control of Partially-Observed Discrete Event Systems.- A Unifying Approach to the Design of Nonlinear Output Regulators.- Controller Design through Random Sampling: an Example.- Digital Control of High Performance Power Supplies for a Synchrotron Light Source.- Distributed PCHD-Systems, from the Lumped to the Distributed Parameter Case.- Observability and the Design of Fault Tolerant Estimation Using Structural Analysis.- Robust Hybrid Control Systems: an Overview of Some Recent Results.