The Symposium presented and discussed the latest research on new theories and advanced applications of automatic systems, which are developed for manufacturing technology or are applicable to advanced manufacturing systems. The topics included computer integrated manufacturing, simulation and the increasingly important areas of artificial intelligence and expert systems, and applied them to the broad spectrum of problems that the modern manufacturing engineer is likely to encounter in the design and application of increasingly complex automatic systems.

These proceedings contain more than 80 of the best papers presented at the INCOM '92 Symposium, and relate to the vast changes which are occurring worldwide in manufacturing technology. Research oriented technical papers cover subjects such as: simulation of manufacturing processes; sensor based robots; information systems; general aspects of CIM and manufacturing networks.

Information Processing is a key area of research and development and the symposium presented state-of-the-art reports on some of the areas which are of relevance in automatic control: fault diagnosis and system reliability. Papers also covered the role of expert systems and other knowledge based systems, which are needed, to cope with the vast quantities of data generated by large scale systems. This volume should be considered essential reading for anyone involved in this rapidly developing area.

Adaptive Systems remain a very interesting field of theoretical research, extended by methodological studies and an increasing number of applications. The plenary papers, invited sessions and contributed sessions focused on many aspects of adaptive systems, such as systems identification and modelling, adaptive control of nonlinear systems and theoretical issues in adaptive control. Also covered were methodological aspects and applications of adaptive control, intelligent tuning and adaptive signal processing.

In the last two decades, the development of specific methodologies for the control of systems described by nonlinear mathematical models has attracted an ever increasing interest. New breakthroughs have occurred which have aided the design of nonlinear control systems. However there are still limitations which must be understood, some of which were addressed at the IFAC Symposium in Capri. The emphasis was on the methodological developments, although a number of the papers were concerned with the presentation of applications of nonlinear design philosophies to actual control problems in chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering.

The papers presented at the Symposium covered the areas in aerospace technology where automatic control plays a vital role. These included navigation and guidance, space robotics, flight management systems and satellite orbital control systems. The information provided reflects the recent developments and technical advances in the application of automatic control in space technology.

These Proceedings provide valuable information on the exchange of ideas between scientists who apply nonlinear programming and optimization to real world control problems and those who develop new methods, algorithms and software. The papers deal with windshear problems, optimization of aircraft and spacecraft trajectories, optimal control for robots, the optimization of urban traffic control, general mechanical systems, multilevel inventory systems and robust control.