>From allgower@aut.ee.ethz.ch Thu Nov 26 16:31:31 1998

******************************************************************
                    Nonlinear Process Control   
              -- On the Way to a Practical Disciplin --   
        
                          Frank Allgower
                   Automatic Control Laboratory
                            ETH Zurich
    
                            

The dynamic behavior of most technical, and in particular chemical 
processes is of nonlinear nature. Often nonlinearities do not play 
a prominent role, but in some cases the nonlinear effects are so 
dominant that control tasks, like stabilization and achievement of 
satisfying control performance, cannot be accomplished with linear 
controllers. For these processes nonlinear controller design 
techniques are mandatory.

During the last 10+ years a number of new nonlinear controller
design techniques have been developed. Although most of these 
methods are very appealing from a theoretical point of view, only 
few real world process control applications based on those results 
are reported on. 
In this talk we will discuss reasons for this lack of practical
application/applicability of some of these methods and will 
show that suitable extensions and modifications can improve the 
practicability considerably.