At the core of many engineering problems is the solution of sets of equa tions and inequalities, and the optimization of cost functions. Unfortunately, except in special cases, such as when a set of equations is linear in its un knowns or when a convex cost function has to be minimized under convex constraints, the results obtained by conventional numerical methods are only local and cannot be guaranteed. This means, for example, that the actual global minimum of a cost function may not be reached, or that some global minimizers of this cost function may escape detection. By contrast, interval analysis makes it possible to obtain guaranteed approximations of the set of all the actual solutions of the problem being considered. This, together with the lack of books presenting interval techniques in such a way that they could become part of any engineering numerical tool kit, motivated the writing of this book. The adventure started in 1991 with the preparation by Luc Jaulin of his PhD thesis, under Eric Walter's supervision. It continued with their joint supervision of Olivier Didrit's and Michel Kieffer's PhD theses. More than two years ago, when we presented our book project to Springer, we naively thought that redaction would be a simple matter, given what had already been achieved . . ."

This book is about guaranteed numerical methods based on interval analysis for approximating sets, and about the application of these methods to vast classes of engineering problems. Guaranteed means here that inner and outer approximations of the sets of interest are obtained, which can be made as precise as desired, at the cost of increasing the computational effort. It thus becomes possible to achieve tasks still thought by many to be out of the reach of numerical methods, such as finding all solutions of sets of non-linear equations and inequality or all global optimizers of possibly multi-modal criteria.The basic methodology is explained as simply as possible, in a concrete and readily applicable way, with a large number of figures and illustrative examples. Some of the techniques reported appear in book format for the first time. The ability of the approach advocated here to solve non-trivial engineering problems is demonstrated through examples drawn from the fields of parameter and state estimation, robust control and robotics. Enough detail is provided to allow readers with other applications in mind to grasp their significance. An in-depth treatment of implementation issues facilitates the understanding and use of freely available software that makes interval computation about as easy as computation with floating-point numbers. The reader is even given the basic information needed to build his or her own C++ interval library.The CD-ROM contains a trial version of Sun Microsystems' Forte(TM) Developer 6 for use with Solaris(TM) SPARC(TM) Platform Edition 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8.