Dynamics and Control of Micro- and Nanoscale Systems: An Introduction to the Special Issue

The articles in this special issue of IEEE Control Systems Magazine are selected from the papers presented at the Second Workshop on Dynamics and Control of Micro- and Nanoscale Systems, which was held at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in February 2012. A report on the workshop appeared in the December 2012 issue of this magazine [1]. Control is a critical technology for emerging micro- and nanoscale systems. Control at such small scales is difficult. These systems tend to have very fast dynamics, which makes control implementation a challenging task for the control engineer. Often significant uncertainty is associated with the dynamic models of these systems, which can also be nonlinear and time varying. Furthermore, sensing at such small scales is a demanding task, and sensor noise often is a key concern. The problems faced by control engineers at the micro- and nanoscales are therefore among the most challenging in the field.