A co-operative system is defined to be multiple dynamic entities that share information or tasks to accomplish a common, though perhaps not singular, objective. Examples of co-operative control systems might include: robots operating within a manufacturing cell, unmanned aircraft in search and rescue operations or military surveillance and attack missions, arrays of micro satellites that form a distributed large aperture radar, employees operating within an organization, and software agents. The term entity is most often associated with vehicles capable of physical motion such as robots, automobiles, ships, and aircraft, but the definition extends to any entity concept that exhibits a time dependent behaviour. Critical to co-operation is communication, which may be accomplished through active message passing or by passive observation. It is assumed that co-operation is being used to accomplish some common purpose that is greater than the purpose of each individual, but we recognize that the individual may have other objectives as well, perhaps due to being a member of other caucuses. This implies that co-operation may assume hierarchical forms as well.
The decision-making processes (control) are typically thought to be distributed or decentralized to some degree. For if not, a co-operative system could always be modeled as a single entity. The level of co-operation may be indicated by the amount of information exchanged between entities. Co-operative systems may involve task sharing and can consist of heterogeneous entities. Mixed initiative systems are particularly interesting heterogeneous systems since they are composed of humans and machines. Finally, one is often interested in how co-operative systems perform under noisy or adversary conditions. In December 2000, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the University of Florida successfully hosted the first Workshop on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. This book contains selected refereed papers summarizing the participants' research in control and optimization of co-operative systems.