This book is a collection of essays devoted in part to new research
direc- tions in systems, networks, and control theory, and in part to
the growing interaction of these disciplines with new sectors of
engineering and applied sciences like coding, computer vision, and
hybrid systems. These are new areas of rapid growth and of increasing
importance in modern technology. The essays, written by world-leading
experts in the field, reproduce and expand the plenary and
minicoursejminisymposia invited lectures which were delivered at the
Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems Sym- posium (MTNS-98), held
in Padova, Italy, on July 6-10, 1998. Systems, control, and networks
theory has permeated the development of much of present day technology.
The impact has been visible in the past fifty years through the dramatic
expansion and achievements of the aerospace and avionics industry,
through process control and factory au- tomation, robotics,
communication signals analysis and synthesis, and, more recently, even
finance, to name just the most visible applications. The theory has
developed from the early phase of its history when the ba- sic tools
were elementary complex analysis, Laplace transform, and linear
differential equations, to present day, where the mathematics ranges
widely from functional analysis, PDE's, abstract algebra, stochastic
processes and differential geometry. Irrespective of the particular
tools, however, the ba- sic unifying paradigms of feedback, stability,
optimal control, and recursive filtering, have remained the bulk of the
field and continue to be the basic motivation for the theory, coming
from the real world.