This book presents the results of a  "MURI" (Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) projects on the topic.  The material is organized under four broad themes, or dimensions of cooperative control. These are: _ Distributed control & computation: The defining characteristic of cooperative control, namely, the distributed nature of decision making among interacting components. Adversarial interactions: A driving motivation for this project is autonomous vehicle systems operating in a possibly hostile environment. The presence of other hostile vehicles that are capable of strategic planning brings into play notions from non-cooperative game theory.   Uncertain evolution: The operating environment introduces significant uncertainty in the operation of autonomous vehicle systems and Complexity management: Cooperative control formulations, if taken at face value, often result in computationally prohibitive solutions.

Jeff Shamma's research interest is feedback control and systems theory. He received a Ph.D. in Systems Science and Engineering in 1988 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering. His previous faculty positions have included the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the University of Texas, Austin. Since 1999, he has been with UCLA, where he is currently a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He served as the MAE Department Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs from 2000-2002.  Jeff Shamma is also the recipient of the NSF Young Investigator Award (1992), a recipient of the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award (1996), a past Plenary Speaker at the American Control Conference (1998), and a Fellow of the IEEE (2006).  He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and Systems & Control Letters.