This book explores connections between control theory and geometric mechanics. The author links control theory with a geometric view of classical mechanics in both its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations, and in particular with the theory of mechanical systems subject to motion constraints. The synthesis is appropriate as there is a rich connection between mechanics and nonlinear control theory. The book provides a unified treatment of nonlinear control theory and constrained mechanical systems that incorporates material not available in other recent texts. The book benefits graduate students and researchers in the area who want to enhance their understanding and enhance their techniques.

Evolutionary algorithms are general-purpose search procedures based on the mechanisms of natural selection and population genetics. They are appealing because they are simple, easy to interface, and easy to extend. This volume is concerned with applications of evolutionary algorithms and associated strategies in engineering. It will be useful for engineers, designers, developers, and researchers in any scientific discipline interested in the applications of evolutionary algorithms. The volume consists of five parts, each with four or five chapters. The topics are chosen to emphasize application areas in different fields of engineering. Each chapter can be used for self-study or as a reference by practitioners to help them apply evolutionary algorithms to problems in their engineering domains.

This book categorizes the wide area of data-driven model-free controllers, reveals the exact benefits of such controllers, gives the in-depth theory and mathematical proofs behind them, and finally discusses their applications. Each chapter includes a section for presenting the theory and mathematical definitions of one of the above mentioned algorithms. The second section of each chapter is dedicated to the examples and applications of the corresponding control algorithms in practical engineering problems. This book proposes to avoid complex mathematical equations, being generic as it includes several types of data-driven model-free controllers, such as Iterative Feedback Tuning controllers, Model-Free Controllers (intelligent PID controllers), Model-Free Adaptive Controllers, model-free sliding mode controllers, hybrid model‐free and model‐free adaptive‐Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning controllers, hybrid model-free and model-free adaptive fuzzy controllers and cooperative model-free controllers. The book includes the topic of optimal model-free controllers, as well. The optimal tuning of model-free controllers is treated in the chapters that deal with Iterative Feedback Tuning and Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning. Moreover, the extension of some model-free control algorithms to the consensus and formation-tracking problem of multi-agent dynamic systems is provided. This book can be considered as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as a professional reference for industrial and academic researchers, attracting the readers from both industry and academia.

While conceptually elegant, the generic formulations of nonlinear model predictive control are not ready to use for the stabilization of relatively fast systems. This book presents a successful approach to this problem based on a co-operation between structural considerations and on-line optimization. It also provides research showing how generic predictive control schemes can be extended from slow process-based systems to a variety of fast systems.

The problem of viability of hybrid systems is considered in this work. A model for a hybrid system is developed including a means of including three forms of uncertainty: transition dynamics, structural uncertainty, and parametric uncertainty. A computational basis for viability of hybrid systems is developed and applied to three control law classes. An approach is developed for robust viability based on two extensions of the controllability operator. The three-tank example is examined for both the viability problem and robust viability problem. The theory is applied through simulation to an active magnetic bearing system and to a batch polymerization process showing that viability can be satisfied in practice. The problem of viable attainability is examined based on the controllability operator approach introduced by Nerode and colleagues. Lastly, properties of the controllability operator are presented.