Computation and Control II

Book excerpt: This volume contains a collection of papers delivered by the partici pants at the second Conference on Computation and Control held at Mon tana State University in Bozeman, Montana from August 1-7, 1990. The conference, as well as this proceedings, attests to the vitality and cohesion between the control theorist and the numerical analyst that was adver tised by the first Conference on Computation and Control in 1988. The proceedings of that initial conference was published by Birkhiiuser Boston as the first volume of this same series entitled Computation and Control, Proceedings of the Bozeman Conference, Bozeman, Montana, 1988. Control theory and numerical analysis are both, by their very nature, interdisciplinary subjects as evidenced by their interaction with other fields of mathematics and engineering. While it is clear that new control or es timation algorithms and new feedback design methodologies will need to be implemented computationally, it is likewise clear that new problems in computational mathematics arise when implementing a new generation of control algorithms. For these reasons, computational mathematics is mov ing to the forefront in recent developments in modern control theory and conversely control theory and its applications continue to be a fertile area for computationalists. This volume contains a representative cross section of the interdisciplinary blend of analytic and numerical techniques that of ten occur between advanced control design and practical numerical solution of lumped and distributed parameter systems.