Adaptive systems for control and signal processing

In several practical applications, one wishes to build systems that can adapt to their environments. Examples range from systems that can adaptively cancel echoes in telephone lines, to adaptive autopilots for supertankers. Several issues are of interest in the design and analysis of adaptive systems. Since adaptive systems are complex, and exercise a lot of autonomy, one would like to establish whether they are reliable; for example whether they are stable, how they respond to unmodeled disturbances, etc. One would also like to establish whether the systems can indeed adapt to their environment, or that they can self-tune to controllers which are optimized to their environment. Since real systems may themselves change with time, one would also like to study how rapid are the time variations that adaptive systems can manage. Several projects address both the theoretical study of such adaptive systems, as well as the their design for specific applications.