Neural networks are an exciting technology of growing importance in real industrial situations, particularly in control and systems. This book aims to give a detailed appreciation of the use of neural nets in these applications; it is aimed particularly at those with a control or systems background who wish to gain an insight into the technology in the context of real applications. The book introduces a wide variety of network types, including Kohenen nets, n-tuple nets and radial basis function networks, as well as the more usual multi-layer perception back-propagation networks. It begins by describing the basic principles and some essential design features, then goes on to examine in depth several application studies illustrating a range of advanced approaches to the topic.

George Irwin was appointed to a personal chair in control engineering at Queen's University Belfast in 1989. His research interests include algorithms and architectures for real-time control, neural networks and control applications in aerospace, electric power and chemical plant. He has published extensively in the field and has won the lEE's Kelvin, Heaviside and Mather premiums. Prof. Irwin is a member of the international Editorial Board of the IEE Proceedings on Control Theory & Applications and an Associate Editor of Control Engineering Practice. He also serves on the executive committee of the UK Automatic Control Council and the IFAC Technical Committee on Algorithms and Architectures for Real-Time Control. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the IEE.