This book comprises the proceedings of the Recent Developments in Control Theory and Applications workshop held in Toronto, Canada, 29th-30th June 1998 in honor of the 60th birthday of E.J. Davison. While the scope of the workshop was quite broad, the main theme was robust control, decentralized control and applications.
Some topics include:
- robust control for car steering
- flow control for networks
- fault diagnosis in discrete event systems.
With contributions from distinguished authors of international repute, the material presented here focuses upon new findings in the field of control including interesting applications. As well as being informative, it is a useful tool for practitioners of systems and control to ascertain new developments in the field.

With contributions from distinguished international authors, the material presented here focuses upon new findings in the field of control including interesting applications. As well as being informative, it is a useful tool for practitioners of systems and control to ascertain new developments in the field.

Honouring the lifelong, celebrated contributions of Professor Shinji Hara to the developments of numerous control theories, this book features a collection of the latest papers from leading researchers in the field. The results presented in the book lay a solid foundation for new control theories to be developed in the future. The book explores the key concept of glocal control. The term glocal is derived from global and local, and glocal control is a technical term in the field of control engineering, coined by Prof. Hara, which means control of dynamical systems with local sensing and actuation to achieve a desired global behaviour. A large number of dynamical components can be interconnected and interact with each other to form an integrated system with certain functionalities. Such complex systems are found in nature and have been created by man, including gene regulatory networks, neuronal circuits for memory, bird flocking, electrical power grids, and financial markets. A common feature of these systems is that a global property or function emerges as a result of local, distributed, dynamical interactions of components. The objective of glocal control is to understand the mechanisms underlying this feature, analysing existing complex systems, and to design and create innovative systems with new functionalities. The concept of glocal control has been gaining much attention recently in the control engineering community and is an emerging research interest."