Series editors’ foreword

Abstract

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, . . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Autonomous control and guidance has had a long and evolving history. Long ocean voyages, large vessels and advanced propulsion systems soon led to the development of autopilots for sea-going vessels. Control developments for aerial vehicles and aircraft followed a similar pattern. Although some similar ideas prevailed for terrestrial vehicles, it took the emergence of electronic implementations for sophisticated control techniques to become more widespread in road vehicles. This field of control-technological development was designed to ease the task of the sailor, the pilot or the driver while they were still present on the bridge, in the cockpit or in the driver’s seat; however, to dispatch a range of tasks in hazardous environments or to perform routine tasks over significant geographical distances, unmanned vehicular technology has developed and made significant strides in recent years. In space, autonomous control and guidance is a prerequisite for accomplishing many tasks involving satellites and unmanned planet “rover” vehicles. Aerial vehicles, either fixed-wing aircraft or rotorcraft are well developed for surveillance and other tasks and autonomous unmanned subsea vehicles are a critical enabler in the success of the oil industry in exploiting offshore oil resources. In recent Advances in Industrial Control monographs, Guillaume J.J. Ducard considered some autonomous control aspects in Fault-tolerant Flight Control and Guidance Systems (ISBN 978-1-84882-560-4, 2009) for an unmanned fixed-wing aerial craft, while a little further back in time, Pedro Castillo, Rogelio Lozano, Alejandro E. Dzul reported on the Modelling and Control of Mini-Flying Machines (ISBN 978-1-85233-957-9, 2005). To add to this literature, the Series Editors are