The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation,informationprocessing,controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks,i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resolution.

The robustness of various cooperative control schemes on large scale networked systems with respect to heterogeneous communication and coupling delays is investigated. The presented results provide delay-dependent and delay-independent conditions that guarantee consensus, rendezvous, flocking, and synchronization in different classes of multi-agent systems (MAS). All conditions are scalable to arbitrarily large multi-agent systems with non-identical agent dynamics. In particular, conditions for linear agents, for nonlinear agents with relative degree one, and for a class of nonlinear agents with relative degree two are presented. The interconnection topology between the agents is in most cases represented by an undirected graph. The results for nonlinear agents with relative degree one hold also for the more general case of directed graphs with switching topologies. Different delay configurations are investigated and compared. These configurations represent different ways how the delays affect the coupling between the agents. The presented robustness analysis considers constant, time-varying, and distributed delays in order to take different sources of delays into account. The results are applied to several typical applications and simulations illustrate the findings.

This volume collects almost two decades of joint work of Sergiu Hart and Andreu Mas-Colell on game dynamics and equilibria. The starting point was the introduction of the adaptive strategy called regret-matching, which on the one hand is simple and natural, and on the other is shown to lead to correlated equilibria. This initial finding — boundedly rational behavior that yields fully rational outcomes in the long run — generated a large body of work on the dynamics of simple adaptive strategies. In particular, a natural condition on dynamics was identified: uncoupledness, whereby decision-makers do not know each other's payoffs and utilities (so, while chosen actions may be observable, the motivations are not). This condition turns out to severely limit the equilibria that can be reached. Interestingly, there are connections to the behavioral and neurobiological sciences and also to computer science and engineering (e.g., via notions of “regret”).Simple Adaptive Strategies is self-contained and unified in its presentation. Together with the formal treatment of concepts, theorems, and proofs, significant space is devoted to informal explanations and illuminating examples. It may be used for advanced graduate courses — in game theory, economics, mathematics, computer science, engineering — and for further research.

This volume, the 7th volume in the DRUMS Handbook series, is part of the aftermath of the successful ESPRIT project DRUMS (Defeasible Reasoning and Uncertainty Management Systems) which took place in two stages from 1989- 1996. In the second stage (1993-1996) a work package was introduced devoted to the topics Reasoning and Dynamics, covering both the topics of "Dynamics of Reasoning", where reasoning is viewed as a process, and "Reasoning about Dynamics", which must be understood as pertaining to how both designers of and agents within dynamic systems may reason about these systems. The present volume presents work done in this context extended with some work done by outstanding researchers outside the project on related issues. While the previous volume in this series had its focus on the dynamics of reasoning pro cesses, the present volume is more focused on "reasoning about dynamics', viz. how (human and artificial) agents reason about (systems in) dynamic environments in order to control them. In particular we consider modelling frameworks and generic agent models for modelling these dynamic systems and formal approaches to these systems such as logics for agents and formal means to reason about agent based and compositional systems, and action & change more in general. We take this opportunity to mention that we have very pleasant recollections of the project, with its lively workshops and other meetings, with the many sites and researchers involved, both within and outside our own work package.

Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems extends optimal control and adaptive control design methods to multi-agent systems on communication graphs. It develops Riccati design techniques for general linear dynamics for cooperative state feedback design, cooperative observer design, and cooperative dynamic output feedback design. Both continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical multi-agent systems are treated. Optimal cooperative control is introduced and neural adaptive design techniques for multi-agent nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics, which are rarely treated in literature are developed. Results spanning systems with first-, second- and on up to general high-order nonlinear dynamics are presented. Each control methodology proposed is developed by rigorous proofs. All algorithms are justified by simulation examples. The text is self-contained and will serve as an excellent comprehensive source of information for researchers and graduate students working with multi-agent systems.

Microbiorobotics is a new engineering discipline that inherently involves a multidisciplinary approach (mechanical engineering, cellular biology, mathematical modeling, control systems, synthetic biology, etc). Building robotics system in the micro scale is an engineering task that has resulted in many important applications, ranging from micromanufacturing techniques to cellular manipulation. However, it is also a very challenging engineering task. One of the reasons is because many engineering ideas and principles that are used in larger scales do not scale well to the micro-scale. For example, locomotion principles in a fluid do not function in the same way, and the use of rotational motors is impractical because of the difficulty of building of the required components. Microrobotics is an area that is acknowledged to have massive potential in applications from medicine to manufacturing. This book introduces an inter-disciplinary readership to the toolkit that micro-organisms offer to micro-engineering The design of robots, sensors and actuators faces a range of techology challenges at the micro-scale. This book shows how biological techniques and materials can be used to meet these challenges World-class multi-disciplanry editors and contributors leverage insights from engineering, mathematical modeling and the life sciences – creating a novel toolkit for microrobotics