System and Control theory is one of the most exciting areas of contemporary engineering mathematics. From the analysis of Watt's steam engine governor - which enabled the Industrial Revolution - to the design of controllers for consumer items, chemical plants and modern aircraft, the area has always drawn from a broad range of tools. It has provided many challenges and possibilities for interaction between engineering and established areas of 'pure' and 'applied' mathematics. This impressive volume collects a discussion of more than fifty open problems which touch upon a variety of subfields, including: chaotic observers, nonlinear local controlability, discrete event and hybrid systems, neural network learning, matrix inequalities, Lyapunov exponents, and many other issues. Proposed and explained by leading researchers, they are offered with the intention of generating further work, as well as inspiration for many other similar problems which may naturally arise from them. With extensive references, this book will be a useful reference source - as well as an excellent addendum to the textbooks in the area.

This volume is composed of invited papers on learning and control. The contents form the proceedings of a workshop held in January 2008, in Hyderabad, that honoured the 60th birthday of Doctor Mathukumalli Vidyasagar.

The 14 papers, written by international specialists in the field, cover a variety of interests within the broader field of learning and control. The editors have grouped these into the following 3 categories:

a [ learning and computational issues

a [ learing for communication and identification

a [ applications of learning and control

The diversity of the research presented gives the reader a unique opportunity to explore a comprehensive overview of a field of great interest to control and system theorists. Specific topics include: a look at progress toward a unified view of communication and control; a new type of neural computation; a review of 50 years of the Pontryagin maximum principle; the control of smart materials and the uses of monotone systems in systems biology.

The reader will benefit from the expert participantsa (TM) ideas on the exciting new approaches to control and system theory and their predictions of future directions for the subject that were discussed at the workshop.

This book provides clear presentations of more than sixty important unsolved problems in mathematical systems and control theory. Each of the problems included here is proposed by a leading expert and set forth in an accessible manner. Covering a wide range of areas, the book will be an ideal reference for anyone interested in the latest developments in the field, including specialists in applied mathematics, engineering, and computer science.

The book consists of ten parts representing various problem areas, and each chapter sets forth a different problem presented by a researcher in the particular area and in the same way: description of the problem, motivation and history, available results, and bibliography. It aims not only to encourage work on the included problems but also to suggest new ones and generate fresh research. The reader will be able to submit solutions for possible inclusion on an online version of the book to be updated quarterly on the Princeton University Press website, and thus also be able to access solutions, updated information, and partial solutions as they are developed.