Description: As the last triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) of this century, the 14th IFAC Congress was recognized as a preeminent event for the worldwide community of control systems science and engineering. Beijing, one of the oldest cities in the world, is fuelled by the rapid growth of the economy and the development of science and technology, including automation. Beijing is famous for the development of automatic machines over many centuries, including the armillary sphere for stimulating the Universe and the seismograph for detecting earthquakes, making the city one of great world centres for automation. The International Program Committee (IPC) received 2169 submitted papers, 53 invited session proposals and eight panel discussion proposals from 68 countries and regions. The technical program for the Congress covers a broad range of topics, with sessions arranged into nine congress tracks and subdivided into 45 technical areas. Reviews were conducted by all the IFAC Technical Committees, with the help of hundreds of worldwide experts. Through this rigorous review procedure 1556 papers, one keynote speech, five plenary lectures, 47 invited session proposals and seven panel discussion proposals were accepted. There were five plenary lectures, one at the start of each of the five days of the Congress. The plenary speakers included some of the world's most outstanding authorities in various control fields. The topics of the plenary lectures encompassed surveys, prospects and introductions to advanced control theory and applications. Following the plenary addresses, the congress program was composed of more than 1500 papers, presented in 214 lecture-type sessions and 47 poster-type sessions. The paper sessions are supplemented by seven panel discussions. The Proceedings of the Congress are published in two forms, printed and CD-ROM. The Proceedings in its printed form consists of 18 volumes: 17 subject volumes, which contain all lecture and poster papers and a plenary volume. The plenary volume contains the keynote speech, plenary papers, panel discussions, and the table of contents, author index and subject index for the full set of subject volumes. This Congress will be remembered as a showcase for the fruitful results on control theory and application achieved sine the beginning of this century. In addition, we expect that several of the results and ideas demonstrated in this Congress will have lasting influence in the next century on the directions taken by the field of control systems engineering.

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