IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, VOL. 49, NO.

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Scanning the Issue*_________________________________________________________________

Dissipativity, Stabilization, and Regulation of Cascade-Connected Systems, Chen and Huang. This paper presents a technical framework utilizing the dissipativity mechanism that gives rise to the solution of the global regulation problem of the cascade-connected systems, subject to both dynamic uncertainty and static uncertainty without knowing the bound of the static uncertainty. Additionally, this paper shows that the nonlinear robust servomechanism problem for the lower triangular systems can be cast into the regulation problem for the cascade-connected systems, thus leading to a complete solution of the nonlinear robust servomechanism problem for the lower triangular systems for the most general case where both the uncertain parameters and the exogenous signals can be arbitrarily large. A Tutorial on the Positive Realization Problem, Benvenuti and Farina. Positivity of the relevant variables of the phenomenon at hand often emerges as the immediate consequence of the nature of the phenomenon itself. A huge number of evidences are just before our eyes. For example, any variable representing any possible type of resource measured by a quantity or even measured by a probability. This paper is a tutorial on the positive realization problem, that is the problem of finding a positive state-space representation of a given transfer function and characterizing existence and minimality of such representation. This problem goes back to the 1950s and was first related to the identifiability problem for hidden Markov models, then to the determination of internal structures for compartmental systems and later embedded in the more general framework of positive systems theory. The reader is carried through the key ideas which have proved to be useful in order to tackle this problem while several motivating examples illustrate pitfalls and let him/her envisage possible routes to solve open problems. A comprehensive bibliography on positive systems organized by topics is provided. The Linear Quadratic Optimization Problems for a Class of Linear Stochastic Systems With Multiplicative White Noise and Markovian Jumping, Dragan and Morozan. The authors consider an LQ stochastic control problem with multiplicative white noise and time-varying parameters defined in terms of a Markovian jump process. Both positivedefinite and indefinit cost functions are considered. LQ problems with indefinite cost functions have been considered in earlier works on economic modelling. The novelty of the paper is the combined use of three nontrivial technical devices. Since both Markov-jump processes and multiplicative noise are useful in financial modelling, in particular in stochastic volatility models, such as the famous GARCH models, this paper is potentially useful in financial applications. The Application of Dynamic Programming to Optimal Inventory Control, Berovic and Vinter. This paper studies a class of deterministic impulse control problems, arising in inventory control that involve an end-point constraint. As a result, the value function may be discontinuous. The authors invoke viability theory as a means to characterize the value function using a quasi-variational inequality (QVI), suitably interpreted for nondifferentiable, extended valued functions. In this paper, a problem is considered for which the value function is neither everywhere finite-valued nor continuously differentiable on the interior of its effective domain. Management of Demand-Driven Production Systems, Chen, Dubrawski, and Meyn. In this paper, the authors have extensively analyzed a fluid network model for demand-driven production systems. They use a workload formulation which allows the dynamics of very complicated models to be nearly decoupled, followed by a relaxation of the workload which completes the decoupling of the system dynamics. Several examples of realistic queuing networks are presented along with numerical evaluation of certain policies for allocation of the available server resources. The determination of the various policies is accomplished by solving appropriate linear programs having objective functions which penalize undesirable system behavior. The authors evaluate time-optimal policies, including several variants of a greedy time-optimal policy which seeks to meet the demands of a very high priority customer quickly and then use production to meet the demands of lower priority customers. Dynamic Programming Equations for Discounted Constrained Stochastic Control, Chen and Blankenship. This paper focuses on the problem of stochastic controls with expected value constraints. Two problems are analyzed by the authors. One is to minimize a discounted infinite-horizon expectation objective subject to an identical structure constraint, and the other is to minimize a discounted infinite-horizon minimax objective subject to a discounted expectation constraint. Using a dynamic programming approach, the optimality equations corresponding to these problems are derived. Furthermore, with the help of the Banach fixed-point theorem, the existence and uniqueness of the solutions of the dynamic programming equations are established. A two-state Markov maintenance system is used as the basis of example problems for the theory developed. Reachability and Steering of Rolling Polyhedra: A Case Study in Discrete Nonholonomy, Bicchi, Chitour, and Marigo. This paper considers the reachability problem for rolling polyhedra as a case study for understanding some fundamental nonlinear dynamical effects in quantized and discrete control systems. Nonholonomy is well-understood for smooth deformations of a surface. However, if the deformations are nonsmooth, the existing theory for smooth surfaces is not applicable anymore. The main contribution of this paper lies in the clarification of the concept of nonholonomy beyond the classical, smooth domain. This is done by means of a case study of

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAC.2004.826739 *This section is written by the TRANSACTIONS Editorial Board.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2004

rolling polyhedra, that is studied in Sections II, III, and IV, followed by the introduction of broader definitions and a system theoretical discussion in Section V. The case study is relevant for applications such as manipulation of industrial parts, and illustrates the discrete-time, discrete-input counterpart of traditional nonholonomic systems. This study of the rolling polyhedron results in a classification of the struc-

ture of the reachable set in relation with the geometry of the polyhedron and a method to steer the polyhedron to any reachable configuration. The case study is then used for generalizations of the classical notion of nonholonomy to discrete and hybrid systems. Examples are illustrating these generalizations.

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