Loosely speaking, adaptive systems are designed to deal with, to adapt
to, chang- ing environmental conditions whilst maintaining performance
objectives. Over the years, the theory of adaptive systems evolved from
relatively simple and intuitive concepts to a complex multifaceted
theory dealing with stochastic, nonlinear and infinite dimensional
systems. This book provides a first introduction to the theory of
adaptive systems. The book grew out of a graduate course that the
authors taught several times in Australia, Belgium, and The Netherlands
for students with an engineering and/or mathemat- ics background. When
we taught the course for the first time, we felt that there was a need
for a textbook that would introduce the reader to the main aspects of
adaptation with emphasis on clarity of presentation and precision rather
than on comprehensiveness. The present book tries to serve this need. We
expect that the reader will have taken a basic course in linear algebra
and mul- tivariable calculus. Apart from the basic concepts borrowed
from these areas of mathematics, the book is intended to be self
contained.