During the 90s robust control theory has seen major advances and achieved a new maturity, centered around the notion of convexity. The goal of this book is to give a graduate-level course on this theory that emphasizes these new developments, but at the same time conveys the main principles and ubiquitous tools at the heart of the subject. Its pedagogical objectives are to introduce a coherent and unified framework for studying the theory, to provide students with the control-theoretic background required to read and contribute to the research literature, and to present the main ideas and demonstrations of the major results. The book will be of value to mathematical researchers and computer scientists, graduate students planning to do research in the area, and engineering practitioners requiring advanced control techniques.

My main goal in writing this monograph is to provide a detailed treatment of uncertainty analysis for sampled-data systems in the context of sys tems control theory. Here, sampled-data system refers to the hybrid sys tem formed when continuous time and discrete time systems are intercon nected; by uncertainty analysis I mean achievable performance in the pres ence of worst -case uncertainty and disturbances. The focus of the book is sampled-data systems; however the approach presented is applicable to both standard and sampled-data systems. The past few years has seen a large surge in research activity centered around creating systematic methods for sampled-data design. The aim of this activity has been to deepen and broaden the, by now, sophisticated viewpoint developed for design of purely continuous time or discrete time systems (e.g. J{oo or -I l optimal synthesis, J1 theory) so that it can be ap plied to the design of sampled-data systems. This research effort has been largely successful, producing both interesting new mathematical tools for control theory, and new methodologies for practical engineering design. Analysis of structured uncertainty is an important objective in control design, because it is a flexible and non-conservative way of analyzing sys tem performance, which is suitable in many engineering design scenarios."

During the 90s robust control theory has seen major advances and achieved a new maturity, centered around the notion of convexity. The goal of this book is to give a graduate-level course on this theory that emphasizes these new developments, but at the same time conveys the main principles and ubiquitous tools at the heart of the subject. Its pedagogical objectives are to introduce a coherent and unified framework for studying the theory, to provide students with the control-theoretic background required to read and contribute to the research literature, and to present the main ideas and demonstrations of the major results. The book will be of value to mathematical researchers and computer scientists, graduate students planning to do research in the area, and engineering practitioners requiring advanced control techniques.