The subject of this book is model abstraction of dynamical systems. The p- mary goal of the work embodied in this book is to design a controller for the mobile robotic car using abstraction. Abstraction provides a means to rep- sent the dynamics of a system using a simpler model while retaining important characteristics of the original system. A second goal of this work is to study the propagation of uncertain initial conditions in the framework of abstraction. The summation of this work is presented in this book. It includes the following: * An overview of the history and current research in mobile robotic control design. * A mathematical review that provides the tools used in this research area. * The development of the robotic car model and both controllers used in the new control design. * A review of abstraction and an extension of these ideas into new system relationship characterizations called traceability and -traceability. * A framework for designing controllers based on abstraction. * An open-loop control design with simulation results. * An investigation of system abstraction with uncertain initial conditions.

A Practical Approach to Dynamical Systems for Engineers takes the abstract mathematical concepts behind dynamical systems and applies them to real-world systems, such as a car traveling down the road, the ripples caused by throwing a pebble into a pond, and a clock pendulum swinging back and forth. Many relevant topics are covered, including modeling systems using differential equations, transfer functions, state-space representation, Hamiltonian systems, stability and equilibrium, and nonlinear system characteristics with examples including chaos, bifurcation, and limit cycles. In addition, MATLAB is used extensively to show how the analysis methods are applied to the examples. It is assumed readers will have an understanding of calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and an interest in mechanical and electrical dynamical systems.