This book is concerned with Intelligent Control methods and
applications. The field of intelligent control has been expanded very
much during the recent years and a solid body of theoretical and
practical results are now available. These results have been obtained
through the synergetic fusion of concepts and techniques from a variety
of fields such as automatic control, systems science, computer science,
neurophysiology and operational research. Intelligent control systems
have to perform anthropomorphic tasks fully autonomously or
interactively with the human under known or unknown and uncertain
environmental conditions. Therefore the basic components of any
intelligent control system include cognition, perception, learning,
sensing, planning, numeric and symbolic processing, fault
detection/repair, reaction, and control action. These components must be
linked in a systematic, synergetic and efficient way. Predecessors of
intelligent control are adaptive control, self-organizing control, and
learning control which are well documented in the literature. Typical
application examples of intelligent controls are intelligent robotic
systems, intelligent manufacturing systems, intelligent medical systems,
and intelligent space teleoperators. Intelligent controllers must employ
both quantitative and qualitative information and must be able to cope
with severe temporal and spatial variations, in addition to the
fundamental task of achieving the desired transient and steady-state
performance. Of course the level of intelligence required in each
particular application is a matter of discussion between the designers
and users. The current literature on intelligent control is increasing,
but the information is still available in a sparse and disorganized way.