Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are becoming increasingly attractive for researchers from various disciplines, such as operations research, computer science, industrial engineering, electrical engineering, social science, economics, etc. This book presents an insightful, comprehensive, and up-to-date treatment of EAs, such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, evolution strategy, constraint optimization, multimodal optimization, multiobjective optimization, combinatorial optimization, evolvable hardware, estimation of distribution algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, artificial immune systems, artificial life, genetic programming, etc.

It emphasises the initiative ideas of the algorithm, contains discussions in the contexts, and suggests further readings and possible research projects. All the methods form a pedagogical way to make EAs easy and interesting.

This textbook also introduces the applications of EAs as many as possible. At least one real-life application is introduced by the end of almost every chapter. The authors focus on the kernel part of applications, such as how to model real-life problems, how to encode and decode the individuals, how to design effective search operators according to the chromosome structures, etc.

This textbook adopts pedagogical ways of making EAs easy and interesting. Its methods include an introduction at the beginning of each chapter, emphasising the initiative, discussions in the contexts, summaries at the end of every chapter, suggested further reading, exercises, and possible research projects.

Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms will enable students to:

establish a strong background on evolutionary algorithms;

appreciate the cutting edge of EAs;

perform their own research projects by simulating the application introduced in the book; and

apply their intuitive ideas to academic search.

This book is aimed at senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students as a textbook or self-study material."

"There are three words that characterize this work: thoroughness, completeness and clarity. The authors are congratulated for taking the time to write an excellent linear systems textbook! a ]The authors have used their mastery of the subject to produce a textbook that very effectively presents the theory of linear systems as it has evolved over the last thirty years. The result is a comprehensive, complete and clear exposition that serves as an excellent foundation for more advanced topics in system theory and control." a "IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

"In assessing the present book as a potential textbook for our first graduate linear systems course, I find...[that] Antsaklis and Michel have contributed an expertly written and high quality textbook to the field and are to be congratulateda ]. Because of its mathematical sophistication and completeness the present book is highly recommended for use, both as a textbook as well as a reference." a "Automatica

Linear systems theory plays a broad and fundamental role in electrical, mechanical, chemical and aerospace engineering, communications, and signal processing. A thorough introduction to systems theory with emphasis on control is presented in this self-contained textbook.

The book examines the fundamental properties that govern the behavior of systems by developing their mathematical descriptions. Linear time-invariant, time-varying, continuous-time, and discrete-time systems are covered. Rigorous development of classic and contemporary topics in linear systems, as well as extensive coverage of stability and polynomial matrix/fractional representation, provide the necessary foundation for further study of systemsand control.

Linear Systems is written as a textbook for a challenging one-semester graduate course; a solutions manual is available to instructors upon adoption of the text. The booka (TM)s flexible coverage and self-contained presentation also make it an excellent reference guide or self-study manual.

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For a treatment of linear systems that focuses primarily on the time-invariant case using streamlined presentation of the material with less formal and more intuitive proofs, see the authorsa (TM) companion book entitled A Linear Systems Primer.

This book presents the mathematical foundations of systems theory in a self-contained, comprehensive, detailed and mathematically rigorous way. It is devoted to the analysis of dynamical systems and combines features of a detailed introductory textbook with that of a reference source. The book contains many examples and figures illustrating the text which help to bring out the intuitive ideas behind the mathematical constructions.

This book aims at providing a view of the current trends in the development of research on Synthesis and Control of Discrete Event Systems. Papers col lected in this volume are based on a selection of talks given in June and July 2001 at two independent meetings: the Workshop on Synthesis of Concurrent Systems, held in Newcastle upon Tyne as a satellite event of ICATPN/ICACSD and organized by Ph. Darondeau and L. Lavagno, and the Symposium on the Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems (SCODES), held in Paris as a satellite event of CAV and organized by B. Caillaud and X. Xie. Synthesis is a generic term that covers all procedures aiming to construct from specifications given as input objects matching these specifications. The ories and applications of synthesis have been studied and developped for long in connection with logics, programming, automata, discrete event systems, and hardware circuits. Logics and programming are outside the scope of this book, whose focus is on Discrete Event Systems and Supervisory Control. The stress today in this field is on a better applicability of theories and algorithms to prac tical systems design. Coping with decentralization or distribution and caring for an efficient realization of the synthesized systems or controllers are of the utmost importance in areas so diverse as the supervision of embedded or man ufacturing systems, or the implementation of protocols in software or in hard ware."

In the last two decades fractional differential equations have been used more frequently in physics, signal processing, fluid mechanics, viscoelasticity, mathematical biology, electro chemistry and many others. It opens a new and more realistic way to capture memory dependent phenomena and irregularities inside the systems by using more sophisticated mathematical analysis.

This monograph is based on the authors work on stabilization and control design for continuous and discrete fractional order systems. The initial two chapters and some parts of the third chapter are written in tutorial fashion, presenting all the basic concepts of fractional order system and a brief overview of sliding mode control of fractional order systems. The other parts contain deal with robust finite time stability of fractional order systems, integral sliding mode control of fractional order systems, co-operative control of multi-agent systems modeled as fractional differential equation, robust stabilization of discrete fractional order systems, high performance control using soft variable structure control and contraction analysis by integer and fractional order infinitesimal variations."

The disciplines of computer science and operations research (OR) have been linked since their origins, each contributing to the dramatic advances of the other. This work explores the connections between these key technologies: how high-performance computing methods have led to advances in OR de ployment, and how OR has contributed to the design and development of ad vanced systems. The collected writings-from researchers and practitioners in Computer Science, Operations Research, Management Science, and Artificial Intelligence-were among those delivered at the Fifth INFORMS Computer Science Technical Section Conference in Dallas, Texas, January 8-10, 1996. The articles advance both theory and practice. Presented are new approaches to complex problems based on: metaheuristics (neural networks, genetic al gorithms, and Tabu Search), optimization and mathematical programming, stochastic methods, constraint programming, and logical analysis. These ad vanced methodologies are applied to new applications in such areas as: telecom munications network design, financial engineering, manufacturing, project man agement, and forecasting, airline and machine scheduling, vehicle routing, mod eling and decision support systems. Featured is a remarkable paper by keynote speaker Fred Glover, creator of the Tabu Search family of metaheuristics. In it he develops the principles of memory-based heuristic methods, contrasts them with the popular genetic algorithms and simulated annealing, provides a sweeping survey of application vignettes, and points to promising avenues for future research."

This book presents a comprehensive development of effective numerical methods for stochastic control problems in continuous time. The process models are diffusions, jump-diffusions, or reflected diffusions of the type that occur in the majority of current applications. All the usual problem formulations are included, as well as those of more recent interest such as ergodic control, singular control and the types of reflected diffusions used as models of queuing networks. Applications to complex deterministic problems are illustrated via application to a large class of problems from the calculus of variations. The general approach is known as the Markov Chain Approximation Method. The required background to stochastic processes is surveyed, there is an extensive development of methods of approximation, and a chapter is devoted to computational techniques. The book is written on two levels, that of practice (algorithms and applications) and that of the mathematical development. Thus the methods and use should be broadly accessible. This update to the first edition will include added material on the control of the 'jump term' and the 'diffusion term.' There will be additional material on the deterministic problems, solving the Hamilton-Jacobi equations, for which the authors' methods are still among the most useful for many classes of problems. All of these topics are of great and growing current interest.

This book presents a concise study of controllability theory of partial differential equations when they are equipped with actuators and/or sensors that are finite dimensional at every moment of time. Based on the author's extensive research in the area of controllability theory, this monograph specifically focuses on the issues of controllability, observability, and stabilizability for parabolic and hyperbolic partial differential equations. The topics in this book also cover related applied questions such as the problem of localization of unknown pollution sources based on information obtained from point sensors that arise in environmental monitoring. Researchers and graduate students interested in controllability theory of partial differential equations and its applications will find this book to be an invaluable resource to their studies.

Linguistic Geometry: From Search to Construction is the first book of its kind. Linguistic Geometry (LG) is an approach to the construction of mathematical models for large-scale multi-agent systems. A number of such systems, including air/space combat, robotic manufacturing, software re-engineering and Internet cyberwar, can be modeled as abstract board games. These are games with moves that can be represented by the movement of abstract pieces over locations on an abstract board. The purpose of LG is to provide strategies to guide the games' participants to their goals. Traditionally, discovering such strategies required searches in giant game trees. These searches are often beyond the capacity of modern and even conceivable future computers. LG dramatically reduces the size of the search trees, making the problems computationally tractable. LG provides a formalization and abstraction of search heuristics used by advanced experts including chess grandmasters. Essentially, these heuristics replace search with the construction of strategies. To formalize the heuristics, LG employs the theory of formal languages (i.e. formal linguistics), as well as certain geometric structures over an abstract board. The new formal strategies solve problems from different domains far beyond the areas envisioned by the experts. For a number of these domains, Linguistic Geometry yields optimal solutions.

One service mathematics has rendered the 'Bt mm, ... si j'avait su comment en revenir, human race. It has put common sense back je n'y serais point alIe.' Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. Eric T. Bell able to do something with it. O. Heavisidc Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

Dynamical models on graphs or random graphs are increasingly used in applied sciences as mathematical tools to study complex systems whose exact structure is too complicated to be known in detail. Besides its importance in applied sciences, the field is increasingly attracting the interest of mathematicians and theoretical physicists also because of the fundamental phenomena (synchronization, phase transitions etc.) that can be studied in the relatively simple framework of dynamical models of random graphs. This volume was developed from the Mathematical Technology of Networks conference held in Bielefeld, Germany in December 2013. The conference was designed to bring together functional analysts, mathematical physicists, and experts in dynamical systems. The contributors to this volume explore the interplay between theoretical and applied aspects of discrete and continuous graphs. Their work helps to close the gap between different avenues of research on graphs, including metric graphs and ramified structures.

Markov decision process (MDP) models are widely used for modeling sequential decision-making problems that arise in engineering, economics, computer science, and the social sciences. Many real-world problems modeled by MDPs have huge state and/or action spaces, giving an opening to the curse of dimensionality and so making practical solution of the resulting models intractable. In other cases, the system of interest is too complex to allow explicit specification of some of the MDP model parameters, but simulation samples are readily available (e.g., for random transitions and costs). For these settings, various sampling and population-based algorithms have been developed to overcome the difficulties of computing an optimal solution in terms of a policy and/or value function. Specific approaches include adaptive sampling, evolutionary policy iteration, evolutionary random policy search, and model reference adaptive search.
This substantially enlarged new edition reflects the latest developments in novel algorithms and their underpinning theories, and presents an updated account of the topics that have emerged since the publication of the first edition. Includes:
innovative material on MDPs, both in constrained settings and with uncertain transition properties;
game-theoretic method for solving MDPs;
theories for developing roll-out based algorithms; and
details of approximation stochastic annealing, a population-based on-line simulation-based algorithm.
The self-contained approach of this book will appeal not only to researchers in MDPs, stochastic modeling, and control, and simulation but will be a valuable source of tuition and reference for students of control and operations research.

This application-oriented monograph focuses on a novel and complex type of control systems. Written on an engineering level, including fundamentals, advanced methods and applications, the book applies techniques originating from new methods such as artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, neural networks etc.

The DARPA Grand Challenge was a landmark in the field of robotics: a race by autonomous vehicles through 132 miles of rough Nevada terrain. It showcased exciting and unprecedented capabilities in robotic perception, navigation, and control. The event took place in October 2005 and drew teams of competitors from academia and industry, as well as many garage hobbyists. This book presents fifteen technical papers that describe each team's driverless vehicle, race strategy, and insights. As a whole, they present the state of the art in autonomous vehicle technology and offer a glimpse of future technology for tomorrow 's driverless cars.

Many of the most challenging problems in the applied sciences involve non-differentiable structures as well as partial differential operators, thus leading to non-smooth distributed parameter systems. This edited volume aims to establish a theoretical and numerical foundation and develop new algorithmic paradigms for the treatment of non-smooth phenomena and associated parameter influences. Other goals include the realization and further advancement of these concepts in the context of robust and hierarchical optimization, partial differential games, and nonlinear partial differential complementarity problems, as well as their validation in the context of complex applications. Areas for which applications are considered include optimal control of multiphase fluids and of superconductors, image processing, thermoforming, and the formation of rivers and networks. Chapters are written by leading researchers and present results obtained in the first funding phase of the DFG Special Priority Program on Nonsmooth and Complementarity Based Distributed Parameter Systems: Simulation and Hierarchical Optimization that ran from 2016 to 2019.

Focuses on System Identification applications of the adaptive methods presented. but which can also be applied to other applications of adaptive nonlinear processes.

Covers recent research results in the area of adaptive nonlinear system identification from the authors and other researchers in the field.

Shortly after the end of World War II high-speed digital computing machines were being developed. It was clear that the mathematical aspects of com putation needed to be reexamined in order to make efficient use of high-speed digital computers for mathematical computations. Accordingly, under the leadership of Min a Rees, John Curtiss, and others, an Institute for Numerical Analysis was set up at the University of California at Los Angeles under the sponsorship of the National Bureau of Standards. A similar institute was formed at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D. C. In 1949 J. Barkeley Rosser became Director of the group at UCLA for a period of two years. During this period we organized a seminar on the study of solu tions of simultaneous linear equations and on the determination of eigen values. G. Forsythe, W. Karush, C. Lanczos, T. Motzkin, L. J. Paige, and others attended this seminar. We discovered, for example, that even Gaus sian elimination was not well understood from a machine point of view and that no effective machine oriented elimination algorithm had been developed. During this period Lanczos developed his three-term relationship and I had the good fortune of suggesting the method of conjugate gradients. We dis covered afterward that the basic ideas underlying the two procedures are essentially the same. The concept of conjugacy was not new to me. In a joint paper with G. D."

Feedback Control Systems: A Fast Track Guide for Scientists and Engineers is an essential reference tool for: Electrical, mechanical and aerospace engineers who are developing or improving products, with a need to use feedback control systems. Faculty and graduate students in the fields of engineering and experimental science (e.g., physics) who are building their own high-performance measuring/test arrangements. Faculties teaching laboratory courses in engineering and measurement techniques, and the students taking those courses. Practising engineers, scientists, and students who need a quick intuitive education in the issues related to feedback control systems. Key features of Feedback Control Systems: The contents and the layout of the book are structured to ensure satisfactory proficiency for the novice designer. The authors provide the reader with a simple yet powerful method for designing control systems using several sensors or actuators. It offers a comprehensive control system troubleshooting and performance testing guide. From the reviewers: Control systems are ubiquitous and their use would be even more widespread if more people were competent in designing them. This book will play a valuable role in expanding the cadre of competent designers. This is a book that needed to be written, and its presentation is different from any other book on controls intended for a wide community of engineers and scientists. The book breaks the common clichA(c) of style in the control literature that tends toward mathematical formality. Instead, the emphasis is on intuition and practical advice. The book contains a very valuable and novel heuristic treatment of the subject. .. one of the bestexamples of a book that describes the design cycle. The book will help satisfy the demand among practising engineers for a good introduction to control systems.

The lectures contained in this book were presented at Harvard University in June 1979. The workshop at which they were presented was the third such on algebro-geometric methods. The first was held in 1973 in London and the emphasis was largely on geometric methods. The second was held at Ames Research Center-NASA in 1976. There again the emphasis was on geometric methods, but algebraic geometry was becoming a dominant theme. In the two years after the Ames meeting there was tremendous growth in the applications of algebraic geometry to systems theory and it was becoming clear that much of the algebraic systems theory was very closely related to the geometric systems theory. On this basis we felt that this was the right time to devote a workshop to the applications of algebra and algebraic geometry to linear systems theory. The lectures contained in this volume represent all but one of the tutorial lectures presented at the workshop. The lec ture of Professor Murray Wonham is not contained in this volume and we refer the interested to the archival literature. This workshop was jointly sponsored by a grant from Ames Research Center-NASA and a grant from the Advanced Study Institute Program of NATO. We greatly appreciate the financial support rendered by these two organizations. The American Mathematical Society hosted this meeting as part of their Summer Seminars in Applied Mathematics and will publish the companion volume of con tributed papers."

Optical networks epitomize complex communication systems, and they comprise the Internet s infrastructural backbone. The first of its kind, this book develops the mathematical framework needed from a control perspective to tackle various game-theoretical problems in optical networks. In doing so, it aims to help design control algorithms that optimally allocate the resources of these networks. With its fresh problem-solving approach, Game Theory in Optical Networks is a unique resource for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in applied mathematics and systems/control engineering, as well as those in electrical and computer engineering."

This is a supplementary volume to the major three-volume Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization set. It can also be regarded as a stand-alone volume presenting chapters dealing with various aspects of the subject in a self-contained way.

In the study of the computational structure of biological/robotic sensorimotor systems, distributed models have gained center stage in recent years, with a range of issues including self-organization, non-linear dynamics, field computing etc. This multidisciplinary research area is addressed here by a multidisciplinary team of contributors, who provide a balanced set of articulated presentations which include reviews, computational models, simulation studies, psychophysical, and neurophysiological experiments.

The book is divided into three parts, each characterized by a slightly different focus: in part I, the major theme concerns computational maps which typically model cortical areas, according to a view of the sensorimotor cortex as "geometric engine" and the site of "internal models" of external spaces. Part II also addresses problems of self-organization and field computing, but in a simpler computational architecture which, although lacking a specialized cortical machinery, can still behave in a very adaptive and surprising way by exploiting the interaction with the real world. Finally part III is focused on the motor control issues related to the physical properties of muscular actuators and the dynamic interactions with the world.

The reader will find different approaches on controversial issues, such as the role and nature of force fields, the need for internal representations, the nature of invariant commands, the vexing question about coordinate transformations, the distinction between hierachiacal and bi-directional modelling, and the influence of muscle stiffness.

This book contains all refereed papers that were accepted to the fifth edition of the " Complex Systems Design & Management " (CSD&M 2014) international conference which took place in Paris (France) on the November 12-14, 2014. These proceedings cover the most recent trends in the emerging field of complex systems sciences & practices from an industrial and academic perspective, including the main industrial domains (aeronautic & aerospace, transportation & systems, defense & security, electronics & robotics, energy & environment, health & welfare services, software & e-services), scientific & technical topics (systems fundamentals, systems architecture & engineering, systems metrics & quality, systemic tools) and system types (transportation systems, embedded systems, software & information systems, systems of systems, artificial ecosystems). The CSD&M 2014 conference is organized under the guidance of the CESAMES non-profit organization, address: CESAMES, 8 rue de Hanovre, 75002 Paris, France.

With the advent and increasing popularity of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and e-learning technologies, the need of "automatic assessment "and" "of" teacher/tutor support" for the two tightly intertwined activities of "comprehension" of reading materials and of "collaboration" among peers has grown significantly. In this context, a polyphonic model of discourse derived from Bakhtin s work as a paradigm is used for analyzing both general texts and CSCL conversations in a unique framework focused on different facets of textual cohesion.

As specificity of our analysis, the "individual learning" perspective is focused on the identification of reading strategies and on providing a multi-dimensional textual complexity model, whereas the "collaborative learning" dimension is centered on the evaluation of participants involvement, as well as on collaboration assessment.

Our approach based on advanced Natural Language Processing techniques provides a qualitative estimation of the learning process and enhances understanding as a mediator of learning by providing automated feedback to both learners and teachers or tutors. The main benefits are its flexibility, extensibility and nevertheless specificity for covering multiple stages, starting from reading classroom materials, to discussing on specific topics in a collaborative manner and finishing the feedback loop by verbalizing metacognitive thoughts."