This book offers a novel approach to adaptive control and provides a sound theoretical background to designing robust adaptive control systems with guaranteed transient performance. It focuses on the more typical role of adaptation as a means of coping with uncertainties in the system model.

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) has become the accepted methodology to solve complex control problems related to process industries. The main motivation behind explicit NMPC is that an explicit state feedback law avoids the need for executing a numerical optimization algorithm in real time. The benefits of an explicit solution, in addition to the efficient on-line computations, include also verifiability of the implementation and the possibility to design embedded control systems with low software and hardware complexity. This book considers the multi-parametric Nonlinear Programming (mp-NLP) approaches to explicit approximate NMPC of constrained nonlinear systems, developed by the authors, as well as their applications to various NMPC problem formulations and several case studies. The following types of nonlinear systems are considered, resulting in different NMPC problem formulations: ؠ Nonlinear systems described by first-principles models and nonlinear systems described by black-box models; - Nonlinear systems with continuous control inputs and nonlinear systems with quantized control inputs; - Nonlinear systems without uncertainty and nonlinear systems with uncertainties (polyhedral description of uncertainty and stochastic description of uncertainty); - Nonlinear systems, consisting of interconnected nonlinear sub-systems. The proposed mp-NLP approaches are illustrated with applications to several case studies, which are taken from diverse areas such as automotive mechatronics, compressor control, combustion plant control, reactor control, pH maintaining system control, cart and spring system control, and diving computers.

The authors of this Festschrift prepared these papers to honour and express their friendship to Klaus Ritter on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Be cause of Ritter's many friends and his international reputation among math ematicians, finding contributors was easy. In fact, constraints on the size of the book required us to limit the number of papers. Klaus Ritter has done important work in a variety of areas, especially in var ious applications of linear and nonlinear optimization and also in connection with statistics and parallel computing. For the latter we have to mention Rit ter's development of transputer workstation hardware. The wide scope of his research is reflected by the breadth of the contributions in this Festschrift. After several years of scientific research in the U.S., Klaus Ritter was ap pointed as full professor at the University of Stuttgart. Since then, his name has become inextricably connected with the regularly scheduled conferences on optimization in Oberwolfach. In 1981 he became full professor of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the Technical University of Mu nich. In addition to his university teaching duties, he has made the activity of applying mathematical methods to problems of industry to be centrally important.

During the past decade model predictive control (MPC), also referred to as receding horizon control or moving horizon control, has become the preferred control strategy for quite a number of industrial processes. There have been many significant advances in this area over the past years, one of the most important ones being its extension to nonlinear systems. This book gives an up-to-date assessment of the current state of the art in the new field of nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). The main topic areas that appear to be of central importance for NMPC are covered, namely receding horizon control theory, modeling for NMPC, computational aspects of on-line optimization and application issues. The book consists of selected papers presented at the International Symposium on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control – Assessment and Future Directions, which took place from June 3 to 5, 1998, in Ascona, Switzerland. The book is geared towards researchers and practitioners in the area of control engineering and control theory. It is also suited for postgraduate students as the book contains several overview articles that give a tutorial introduction into the various aspects of nonlinear model predictive control, including systems theory, computations, modeling and applications.

For the first time, a textbook that brings together classical predictive control with treatment of up-to-date robust and stochastic techniques. Model Predictive Control describes the development of tractable algorithms for uncertain, stochastic, constrained systems. The starting point is classical predictive control and the appropriate formulation of performance objectives and constraints to provide guarantees of closed-loop stability and performance. Moving on to robust predictive control, the text explains how similar guarantees may be obtained for cases in which the model describing the system dynamics is subject to additive disturbances and parametric uncertainties. Open- and closed-loop optimization are considered and the state of the art in computationally tractable methods based on uncertainty tubes presented for systems with additive model uncertainty. Finally, the tube framework is also applied to model predictive control problems involving hard or probabilistic constraints for the cases of multiplicative and stochastic model uncertainty. The book provides: extensive use of illustrative examples; sample problems; and discussion of novel control applications such as resource allocation for sustainable development and turbine-blade control for maximized power capture with simultaneously reduced risk of turbulence-induced damage. Graduate students pursuing courses in model predictive control or more generally in advanced or process control and senior undergraduates in need of a specialized treatment will find Model Predictive Control an invaluable guide to the state of the art in this important subject. For the instructor it provides an authoritative resource for the construction of courses.