Advances in Automatic Control, 2004 The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science Series, Vol. 754

During the academic year 2002-2003, the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering of Ia~i (Romania), and its Departments of Automatic Control and Industrial Informatics and of Computer Engineering respectively, celebrated 25 years from the establishment of the specialization named Automatic Control and Computer Engineering within the framework of the former Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Ia~i, and, at the same time, 40 years since the first courses on Automatic Control and Computers respectively, were introduced in the curricula of the former specializations of Electromechanical Engineering and Electrical Power Engineering at the already mentioned Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The reader interested to know some important moments ofour evolution during the last five decades is invited to see the Addendum ofthis volume, where a short history is presented. And, to highlight once more the nice coincidences, it must be noted here that in 2003 our Technical University "Gheorghe Asachi" of Ia~i celebrated 190 years from the emergence of the first cadastral engineering degree course in Ia~i (thanks to the endeavor ofGheorghe Asachi), which is today considered to be the beginningofthe engineering higher education in Romania. Generally speaking, an anniversary is a celebration meant to mark special events ofthe past, with festivities to be performed solemnly and publicly according to a specific ritual.

1. Internal stabilization of the phase field system. 2. A solution to the fixed end-point linear quadratic optimal problem. 3. Pattern recognition control systems - a distinct direction in intelligent control. 4. The disturbance attenuation problem for a general class of linear stochastic systems. 5. Conceptual structural elements regarding a speed governor for hydrogenerators. 6. Towards intelligent real-time decision support systems for industrial milieu. 7. Non-analytical approaches to model-based fault detection and isolation. 8. Control of DVD players; focus and tracking control loop. 9. On the structural system analysis in distributed control. 10. On the dynamical control of hyper redundant manipulators. 11. Robots for humanitarian demining. 12. Parametrization of stabilizing controllers with applications. 13. Methodology for the design of feedback active vibration control systems. 14. Future trends in model predictive control. 15. Blocking phenomena analysis for discrete event systems with failures and/or preventive maintenance schedules. 16. Intelligent planning and control in a CIM system. 17. Petri Net Toolbox - teaching discrete event systems under Matlab. 18. Componentwise asymptotic stability - from flow-invariance to Lyapunov functions. 19. Independent component analysis with application to dams displacements monitoring. 20. Fuzzy controllers with dynamics, a systematic design approach. 21. Discrete time linear periodic Hamiltonian systems and applications. 22. Stability of neutral time delay systems: a survey of some results. 23. Slicot-based advanced automatic control computations. 24. On the connection between Riccati inequalities and equations in H8 control problems. 25. New computational approach for the design of fault detection and isolation filters. 26. Setting up the reference input in sliding motion control and its closed-loop tracking performance. 27. Flow-invariance method in control - a survey of some results. 28. ADDENDUM: Brief history of the automatic control degree course at Technical University 'Gh. Asachi' of Iasi.