Upon first reviewing this assemblage of technical papers, said to be one in a series on “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing,” I am tempted to question the basis for its publication. It is hard to imagine a compelling answer, or any justification for how or why this collection of 35 apparently independent papers by 93 authors was produced. This volume’s title is broadly generic and could cover any contemporary writing in the field of control systems and computer science. The editor provides the reader with no guidance in the form of an introduction, topical organization or grouping, titled sections, or concluding remarks. There seems to be no rationale for how these papers were collected or why any particular paper was included.

The book’s back cover provides a short description of the goals of this volume, which asserts that the series publications are “primarily textbooks and proceedings of important conferences, symposia, and congresses. They cover significant recent developments in the field, both of a foundational and applicable character.” Unfortunately, this particular volume is neither a textbook nor the proceedings of any important conference, symposium, or congress, recent or not. The topics included in this volume range from purely theoretical to application specific, in an apparently random order. The result is confusing, with individual papers not sorted by topic, or even alphabetically or chronologically. As the individual publication dates are not provided, one can only guess by perusing the reference dates that most of the papers came out in the last one to five years. Given the pace of change in these fields, it is doubtful that most of these papers actually report significant recent developments.

I must conclude that these 35 papers are standalone. They are certainly not cross-referenced within the collection. While each paper does include a list of references, there is no common set of references or list of acronyms, nor is there a uniform style or format. Unfortunately, an assessment of the individual papers thus assembled, however meritorious they may be by themselves, is beyond the scope of this review. I am thus unable to recommend this collection of seemingly disparate papers, ranging across a widely generic topical field, to anyone, save the individual authors who wish to include this citation in their curriculum vitae.