The research in linear control theory has a long tradition in the Institute. During the 1960s researchers of the Institute made considerable developments in both transfer-function and state-space methods. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the members of the Department achieved significant results, which launched an entirely new area of research worldwide. Among these are the parametrization of all controllers stabilizing a given plant (known as the Youla-Kučera parametrization) and the design of control systems via polynomial equations. Starting the 1990s, the research activities of the department ranged from robust control to nonlinear systems.
In the present time, the department is primarily devoted to fundamental research in the field of control theory and systems engineering, both for linear and nonlinear systems, including chaotic systems and general systems theory. It uses tools from mathematical modeling, theory of differential equation, differential geometry, linear algebra, optimization and numerical mathematics. The respective theoretical results are then successfully implemented to more specific fields, like modeling and control of biological and biotechnological systems, modeling and control of mechanical systems, including robotic walking analysis and design, having promising application outlooks. Further theoretical topics of the department, where application potential is studied as well, are multi-agent systems, large-scale systems, nonlinear systems interconnected in complex networks, with possible presence of distributed parameters and time-delays.
