The area of adaptive systems encompasses recursive identification, adaptive control, filtering, and signal processing. Since adaptive controllers are fundamentally nonlinear controllers which are applied to nominally linear, possibly stochastic and time-varying systems, their theoretical analysis is usually very difficult.

The area of adaptive systems, which encompasses recursive identification, adaptive control, filtering, and signal processing, has been one of the most active areas of the past decade. Since adaptive controllers are fundamentally nonlinear controllers which are applied to nominally linear, possibly stochastic and time-varying systems, their theoretical analysis is usually very difficult. Nevertheless, over the past decade much fundamental progress has been made on some key questions concerning their stability, convergence, performance, and robustness. Moreover, adaptive controllers have been successfully employed in numerous practical applications, and have even entered the marketplace.