The topics of control engineering and signal processing continue to flourish and develop. In common with general scientific investigation, new ideas, concepts and interpretations emerge quite spontaneously and these are then discussed, used, discarded or subsumed into the prevailing subject paradigm. Sometimes these innovative concepts coalesce into a new sub-discipline within the broad subject tapestry of control and signal processing. This preliminary battle between old and new usually takes place at conferences, through the Internet and in the journals of the discipline. After a little more maturity has been acquired by the new concepts then archival publication as a scientific or engineering monograph may occur.

A new concept in control and signal processing is known to have arrived when sufficient material has evolved for the topic to be taught as a specialised tutorial workshop or as a course to undergraduate, graduate or industrial engineers. Advanced Textbooks in Control and Signal Processing are designed as a vehicle for the systematic presentation of course material for both popular and innovative topics in the discipline. It is hoped that prospective authors will welcome the opportunity to publish a structured and systematic presentation of some of the newer emerging control and signal processing technologies in the textbook series.

It is always interesting to look back at how a particular field of control systems theory developed. The impetus for change and realization that a new era in a subject is dawning always seems to be associated with short, sharp papers that make the academic community think again about the prevalent theoretical paradigm. In the case of the evolution of robust control theory, the conference papers of Zames (circa. 1980) on robustness and the very short paper of Doyle on the robustness of linear quadratic Gaussian control systems seem to stand as landmarks intimating that control theory was going to change direction again. And the change did come; all through the 1980s came a steady stream of papers rewriting control theory, introducing system uncertainty, H robust control and μ- synthesis as part of a new control paradigm.