Optimization and Systems Theory Seminar
Tuesday, August 31, 1999, 11.00-12.00, Room 3721, Lindstedtsv. 25


Professor John C. Doyle
Department of Control and Dynamical Systems
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
USA
E-mail: doyle@cds.caltech.edu

Fundamental tradeoffs in robustness of complex systems

We examine the tradeoffs involved in designing complex systems that are robust to uncertainties both in their environment and in the component from which they are built. We introduce the first of what we expect will be one of many fundamental mathematical laws of robustness, originally due to Bode, but both simplified and generalized. We expect robustness to play an important role in future complex systems as physical laws associated with matter, energy, light, and quanta, and more recent mathematical laws of information and computation. We also motivate the discussion with a variety of examples from familiar biological and engineering systems.
Calendar of seminars
Last update: August 30, 1999 by Anders Forsgren, anders.forsgren@math.kth.se.